I absolutely do not agree with some of the ways that my internist recommends handling gastric issues or even anxiety because the pharmaceutical way of handling these, you know, altering the acid that's happening within the stomach depending on which way you're trying to angle it, it doesn't correct the problem. It's like you're going to have to take this medication for life and it's not even the best way to approach it. You know, they say that adult onset intolerances and food allergies are not reversible. Like that is what, you know, I have been told and that's what I've studied in the books as well. So that was what I sort of accepted to be the norm. It's like I need an actual medicine that actually works and I was so grateful to be able to find something that was natural and healing and something that heals the body and then it's like I don't need it anymore. It's like now my body is back up to normal. Sure. And I just remember the day was probably like a year ago and I was like I think this is the best I have ever felt. Like I'm like my energy feels good, my body feels good, like my mood is good. I'm like I am a new me. Hi I'm Dr. Alex Hyne, author of Master the Day and today we're here with a patient from my practice and a success story Julie. So Julie, thanks for being here. Now I always like to start with you had seen other medical practitioners like your internist and other east-west practitioners. What did they say specifically regarding your condition? Were you going to need to take medication for life? Was this reversible? What was the situation? You know my internist gave me dietary recommendations you know which is understandable but you know his fix was going on a medication called a meprosol and I took it for about two weeks and then the situation was subside but the problem was it just kept coming back. Sure. You know and that was the problem for me is that I didn't want to constantly be on a medication. There really was no fix for you know managing or curing the symptom. It was it was about managing the symptoms basically and it seemed to be a pattern where I was just constantly going to be on you know two weeks of a meprosol and then it'd be fine for like six weeks and then I'd be back on it. So it just wasn't fixing the problem and you know for me it's it's not just about you know changing my diet it's about like how am I going to heal what is wrong you know. So when I was seeking out a solution you know I wanted something that was going to be natural that was going to heal my body like correct it as opposed to just continuing to put me on a medication. So in regards to the treatment of the anxiety and more of like the adrenal fatigue what were they recommending? He did give me like Xanax like a benzodiazepine right to use if I needed to which is not my first choice and as far as fatigue you know I had him run my blood panels in order to look for iron anemia and of course cancer because anytime I don't feel good I'm like I got cancer but you know and he didn't find anything and so I continued my journey and trying to find a remedy to the situation to then consulting was like the functional doctors and like osteopathic doctors. So then all of a sudden I had these two different opinions about my blood work and then it still like just didn't fix the problem. What is the cause like where is this happening how are we going to fix this? Sure. As for me as like you know a single mother trying to manage all the things and take care of myself and being able to like show up to take care of my kids it's like I need an answer you know and trying to navigate that in the medical world is just you know overwhelming. Now paint me the before picture what were the symptoms you were experiencing how was it interfering with your day-to-day life was there one particular bad day that was the day where it had to change or was this something just chronic where your quality of life was being eroded every single day by how bad it was? Well as far as my digestion I think everything started you know even like a few years ago like I was living with these very mild symptoms just having this gnawingness or even this like constant feeling of like almost being hungry but not hungry. So I think that the disruption in my gut started years ago of you know having these these symptoms of just like a gnawingness or a burningness you know in the like the stomach area or like just the GI tract in general and then it progressively got worse you know into like actual acid reflux that just like wasn't going away and I think with all of that of having the you know anxiety for me it was just like my mind was always going about my circumstances and how I was going to keep myself safe and the changes that I needed to make and how overwhelming that was and then of course that mental spend starts to disrupt your sleep because you're not sleeping well and then you're waking up in the middle of the night I just feel like all of that you know together because the body you know it just works together between like what are we eating and how is that supporting the brain health and then how is the sleep affecting the hormones and then how is the digestive system being you know altered so it was just it was like one thing just started to tip like a domino through the entire system you know so even as I'm talking to the doctors it's like well where do I start sure do I start with the mind do I start with the gut do I start with the sleep it's like which one is the right way to go now what hesitations did you have about seeing a doctor of traditional chinese medicine I mean to some people this is hocus pocus right and it's voodoo and it's esoteric right did you have any hesitations about coming to see someone like me you know my hesitation in stepping into the chinese medicine was just simply like is this going to work you know because I had seen people before and it didn't really make a difference and I mean I was blown away by the way that it corrected the GI symptoms of the acid reflux and all of the indigestion and then it didn't come back so what were your results and describe a little bit about the treatment that we did and what your actual treatment protocol for lack of a better word looked like so I remember you know coming in and having sort of a list of like this is what I got going on and and all of these different symptoms and things that I wanted to address and I just remember you know starting with one type of formula I think it was the cinnamon toast crunch it's like my favorite formula and I was most impressed because I would have all these reactions like an adult onset like intolerance let's say like bell peppers and like the most bizarre foods and it was like I knew it worked because at one point I had some meal that had bell peppers in it and I was like oh darn it I'm going to get like acid reflux and I got none of it and I was like okay this not only works but it's actually like healed and changed my system so surprisingly I'm able to eat you know anything I want I can drink all the coffee I want thank you so much I love my gobby you know without any type of acid reflux but after going through that I could just tell like my system just felt better it wasn't having those types of reactions I could eat those foods and not have that type of you know gastric acid reflux and so everything felt better my digestion was better and then of course it started to correct you know my energy because all of a sudden my system's actually digesting and absorbing all of these nutrients and then when I get more sleep when I got better sleep it's like then I can think better so it's like once you start to heal one part of the body it just starts to affect the other parts of the body and the you know the whole organism is just like working in concert with itself now at this point would you agree with the advice your traditional medical providers gave to you regarding medication for this condition I absolutely do not agree with some of the ways that my internist recommends handling gastric issues or even anxiety because the pharmaceutical way of handling these you know altering the acid that's happening within the stomach depending on which way you're trying to angle it it doesn't correct the problem it's like you're gonna have to take this medication for life and it's not even the best way to approach it so I love that the Chinese medicine actually goes into heal whatever is wrong and the thing is that you don't have to continue to take them after a certain amount of time where my internist it was a medication that I would constantly have to take constantly have to revisit like every six weeks I'd have to go back on this a meprosol for like two weeks at a time and I'm like this just isn't getting better and it's not fixing the problem what advice would you give to someone who you know can be helped by this but they are just too on the fence to want to try it you know when I try to describe this to my friends or even some of my own patients I describe it as like taking the most medicinal parts of plants and putting it in your body and you really can't understand it until you've experienced it you know you have to see how your body works with it in general but you know Chinese medicine is just this ancient way for the last 2000 years so they must be doing something right being able to heal the body with just these natural you know medicinal parts of the plants and if you look even further into it in western medicine like they use those parts of the plants to make the pharmaceuticals so it's like the root of all pharmaceuticals is going to be the Chinese medicine it's like why not just go straight to the source and get like the absolute highest dose of what you need to heal the body from the absolute source of what it is and do you have any further thoughts for someone who needs help but maybe is too skeptical or just aren't sure if this is right for them I have a lot of thoughts about that actually I think the first thing and something that's very unique to your clinic is simply you because there's always a bedside manner with doctors about people who actually care about the patients who's in front of them and people who want to really dig deep and investigate and find the source of the problem that's going on with that human being because we may come in with certain symptoms but like there's always an entire world you know that that person is experiencing and a medical history and it's like what is the medical mystery right here you know to just simply have a doctor who's going to do that type of work I think is definitely a big part of the magic of the medicine here and then you know for people who are skeptical about Chinese medicine I think it's really understanding you know how many thousands of years this medicine has actually been in practice and to know that there are you know peer reviewed published studies on the medicine just like Western medicine has about its efficiency you know and this is a medicine that is you know also supported by insurance companies so there's validity to this like it is recognized as something that is like a primary care option so there's a lot of like scientific backing behind this practice as well it's not just this like voodoo airy fairy medicine like it is actually science backed so it's really about treating the body with nature and I know that sometimes in our culture that's not how we're trained right we think we need these chemicals from a lab in order to fix the body but you know the body can heal itself when it's given the right components and so to really understand that this medicine comes from a natural source that just helps heal the body directly and it's actually healing to the body it's something that's going to correct the body not just manage those symptoms how long did it take you to go from I think this might be doing something to this is clearly doing something I feel like when I first started to take some of those bitter formulas for the gastric um I could start to see the improvements you know within I want to say two to four weeks and then I think it was like three months or so after being on the formula probably with slight variations just depending on what I was going through when I came into the clinic I think it was like after about three to four months where I started to eat foods that once gave me a bunch of heartburn that all of a sudden I had zero reaction to and so I thought that was really quite incredible and then after I stopped the formulas I really haven't had to go back on them so it's like not something that I've had to continue to take it's like the body is healed and now the body manages just fine it's almost just like the formulas just needed to correct what was ever wrong whatever damage had been done and then it's like kind of allowing the body to heal itself and then it's like ready to go


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing 2021 Break King, Stars and Legends Hobby, 3 box case, random team number 2. High risk, high reward. 18 spot showing it's a random letter from the list below. Player's first letter of his or her last name appears on the card. If we pull a Charles Barkley it will go to the B spot for Barkley. If we pull a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar it will go to the A for the A spot. Abdul-Jabbar not J for Jabbar. If we pull a one name person like an Ichiro or a Pele it will go to either I or P. If it says Ichiro Suzuki then obviously it will go to the S for S for Suzuki. Here's the list of letters from A down to the combo spot of Y, V, I and N. If there are any hits that do not have one of these for it we will do a randomizer for that card at the end to the entire break. So here's the list of customers from Jeff Henn with Last Spot Mojo back up to Wesley Thomas and the letters from the combo spot back up to letter A. Dice will randomize both lists and pair them up four out of five nine times. Ninth and final time from Wesley Thomas down to Wesley Thomas. Nine times on the letters. So TJ how are you? Happy Bundy. Ninth and final time from B down to K. Nine times on the randomizer. So Wesley Thomas with B, Kenneth Geiger with G, Gail Ablow with R, Jeff Henn with A and H. Michael Robinson with J, Dylan Sadler with F, John Gotti with M, Luis Ramirez with L, Roger Hoyn to the combo spot of Y, V, I and N. Gail Ablow with C, Zach Wynn with P, Brian Croft with E, Luis Ramirez with S, Jeffrey Dorlak with D, Anthony Goodwight with T, Oliver Sorio with W and Wesley Thomas with K. Quick trade window. Trains are a little bit hard on a product like this without a checklist but if you've got a letter that you're dead set on go for it. The walker or the tiger. Yeah, yeah, right? That wouldn't be too bad. Okay, trade window going once, trade window going twice, trade window going three times, trade window closed. So let's print and rip. Tiger Tiger Woods y'all. And here is the case. 2021 Break King Stars and Legends. Yeah, true Zion, also. Ted Williams, maybe. He'd be in there. Yes, and the Larry Walker Tiffany tip. So there is our final list. Good luck, everybody. Sale sheet. We've got Frank Gifford, 1959 tops, PSA five. To start for the G, Kenneth Geiger, 1959 tops, PSA five. Very cool looking card there. John Morant, Mosaic, Pink Camo, Rookie, PSA nine for M and John Gotti. They were talking about him and the Grizzlies potentially being in a playing game for the playoffs against the Pelicans. That'd be pretty cool. And Oliver called it Tiger Woods, PSA nine, upper deck, 2001 for the W spot, Oliver Sorio. He said he would take the Woods rookie. Gonna get it. There you go, Oliver. Called a shot. Oh, thank you, man. Box two, Michael Jordan, 1993 Ultra, PSA nine. Starts us off. Jay, Michael Robinson. I have so many of these at home. Number two is a non graded card. It's Johnny Mize. Legendary cuts signature from SP Legendary Cuts. It's numbered 17 out of 133. It's going to the M spot, John Gotti. That is from 2007 SP Legendary Cuts Baseball. It's interesting because like the cut is on the bottom, but there's no nothing above it. That's cool. And the final hit, Prism Disco, Justin Herbert, PSA nine. H for Jeff Hannon, last spot mojo. There you go, Jeff. Thanks for getting in. Congrats on the hit. And box number three. We're starting off with 1989 Barry Sanders score rookie PSA eight. For the S spot in Luis Ramirez. Oh, that Barry Sanders. We're going Donovan Mitchell rated rookie optic spider PSA nine for the M spot again, John Gotti. And the final hit for the case is the Sean Watson select rookie PSA 10 for the W spot in the Oliver Soria. Premier level rookie PSA 10, a woods and a Watson for Oliver. And there you go guys. That is the case. 2021 break King stars and legends hobby three box case break random team number two from jaskiescasebreaks.com. One more case to do for the night. And that is it jaskiescasebreaks.com. I'm Sean. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time.


So Snog Mario avoid Rambo, Ripley from Alien, or Dom Torezzo from the Fast and Furious films. So I'd Snog Rambo, I'd void the Fast Thing, and I'll marry Rambo, because he's a hero. I'll Snog Ripley and I'll avoid... And who would you do out of Ray from Star Wars, Black Widow from Avengers, Scarlett Johansson, or Wonder Woman? Ooh. I'd marry Scarlett. I'd Snog Wonder Woman. And this is the final one, Tom Cruise edition. Is it Ethan Hunt from Mission Possible? Maverick from Top Gun, or Jeremy Gawire? Well Ethan is always on the run though. So marrying him, I'm barely gonna see him. Okay, I'll marry him. Yeah, I'll marry Ethan. That's quite good. Snog the other one, Ian and Gawire. And then who am I avoiding? And then there's Maverick from Top Gun. He's gonna be busy as well. Yeah, he's busy as well. They're all elsewhere. Yeah, that actually kind of suits me. I'm very independent. Okay, marry Jeremy Gawire for the fun of it. Snog Maverick, and avoid Ethan Hunt because I sort of send him to the film.


Well, the story is the same in Akita State, where the APC Congress Appeal Committee didn't get any petition as a result of its state congress. A former deputy governor of Oyo State, Iola Oladoku, is the leader of the five-member appeal panel in that state. The other time, no group came before us but two individuals. We are just mentioning any group here, we are not aware to the best of our knowledge here. And now, no petition came from any group to us or individual, for that matter. And we are preparing our report to be submitted to the headquarters of our great party in Abuja. The aim of setting up this panel is to belize the fact that there may be people who are agreed and it's a way of looking at the agreeances in order to foster peace and unity within the party. So whichever way you present your grievances or complain, the party or this panel is bound to look at it but we receive none by whatever means. And if Abuja has received anything, they would have passed it on to us. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


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


Because of lads, I moved from Gamba to Minchila. Once we settled here, we started having hope for a better life again. But we were hit with severe drought that killed almost all of our livestock. As a young girl, I remember my father had many cows, about 500. Life was good and I lacked nothing. I got whatever I wanted. During the last drought, we lost so much of our livestock. Seven of my children had to move to other areas with the very few cows that survived. My only daughter, Leila, has now picked up farming which is a new concept to us. Her determination makes me very proud. Friends and I realized that we could no longer only rely on our animals. We started our farm to grow crops for food. It is raining now and in two weeks or even the day after tomorrow, the drought will start and our livestock will die. Sometimes I want to cry and I'm afraid that the next calamity will take away everything. At times I think of leaving home because there's no water or if it comes, it is too much. But where will I go?


Iron regulatory proteins 1 and 2, IRP1 and IRP2, bind to iron responsive elements, IREs, in the untranslated regions of target mRNAs, which controls the expression of genes involved in iron, oxygen and energy metabolism. IRP1 acts as either an RNA binding protein or a cytosolic echinotase, whereas IRP2 only works as an RNA binding protein. Early experiments in cultured cells showed that IRPs play a critical role in regulating cellular iron metabolism. Recent studies in mouse models have revealed additional roles for IRPs in the context of systemic iron homeostasis. For example, IRP1 has been shown to be essential for the proper development of erythrocyte precursors, while IRP2 plays a major role in the regulation of iron uptake and heme biosynthesis in these cells. Furthermore, targeted disruption of either IRP1 or IRP2 in mice results in distinct phenotypes, such as polycythemia and pulmonary hypertension in IRP1 knockout mice and microsit. This article was authored by Nicole E. Wilkinson and Kostas E. Pantopoulos. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Violent shootings, parallel congresses and loads of drama characterize the APC Congress held over the weekend. And don't vote for the PDP and APC again because they have bad antecedents, former Aina commissioner Atahiru Jega wants Nigerians. This is Plus Politics and I am Mary Anacorn. Mild drama played out in the country over the weekend as the ruling party, the APC, had its party congress. Some of the intrigues that hallmarked the congresses are violent shootings, which claimed one life and injured many in a kitty. Parallel exercises in Lagos Anogun, bickering in Aqaibom, Oshun and Delta, among other states. In Rivers, in Rivers State previously, Senator Magmus Abbey had urged supporters to boycott Saturday's nationwide ward congresses of the party, citing indiscriminate issuance of nomination forms. He also accused Amina Gamawa, head of the team, selling the nomination forms in Rivers State of dumping fairness and equity to share the forms to predetermined party leaders to the exclusion of others, especially his supporters. Well, joining us to discuss this is Senator Magmus Abbey. Thank you very much, Senator Abbey, for joining us. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure. Great. Just as I started and I stated that there has been, I mean the weekend was a very intriguing one, with the APC going ahead with its congresses and we can see all of the pockets of violence that was a resultant effect of that congress. We've seen parallel congresses and of course in your state you have also spoken about the fact that there was no equity and there was no fair play. But before we get to Rivers State, let's talk about the APC in general. I'd like to start by asking, and you can choose how to answer this question. Is the APC in trouble? No, I don't think so. If you have been a close watch of Nigerian politics, partisan politics over the years, you will discover that there's really nothing different about what is happening in the APC when you compare it to what has always happened in political parties in this country. The truth of the matter is that Nigerian politicians are not Democrats. Nobody, most of the people who are in politics in this country, they don't like the idea of submitting themselves, their aspirations and whatever to the dictate of the majority. So before any contest is held in this country, the average politician will do whatever they can to achieve a predetermined end. And I think that is at the bottom of all the crisis we have whenever we are to do anything that is electoral in nature. So it's not something that is limited to the APC. It doesn't matter anywhere you bring Nigerians to vote. You will always have violence, you have drama, you have all these efforts and attempts to cheat one another and achieve a predetermined end. It's just the way we still are and it's a culture that we need to do a lot more to change. Why do we call ourselves a democratic state if you're saying that most of our politicians and most I'm guessing is at least 70% of them are undemocratic and you're saying that even the way that you conduct your internal politics and you're speaking for your party, you're saying that there's nothing democratic about it. Why are we saying that we're running a democracy?  No, I think that like every human process, there's every need for us to benchmark our activities and our progress against a predetermined goal. I think the goal for democracy in this country will be for us to have hitch-free elections where anybody can by whatever means check the process to see that the process is not only fair but whatever counts there are accurate and verifiable. But the processes that we have in place presently will not lead us to that expected end. So I think what we need to do instead of us to wring our hands and say, oh, are we joking? I think the thing to do is for us to, as a country, as a people, you know, try to actualize and imbibe the virtues of democracy and then do what we can to improve our processes. We can't keep using the same style of voting and counting that we have been using that clearly produces a lot of contradictions and confusion. So I think it's a question of improving our processes. But in terms of what we do now in the country, I think by and large what you have seen in the APC congresses is what you see in Nigeria and democracy, the Nigerian democratic space. So we need to improve on that. I did have a conversation with someone from the APC and the PDP on the issue where the speaker of the House of Representatives mentioned that they would want to include in the Electoral Act bill direct primaries as opposed to any other form of primaries, and this would suffice for different political parties which the PDP kicked against because they're saying that the constitution of the country should not dictate to political parties what they should do. I'm saying this to say, the APC has also spoken about consensus candidates across board and looking at the congress that they went ahead to do over the weekend, we can see that most of the people who are having parallel congresses or had parallel congresses and the bickering that we've seen over the weekend which has led the vice president to call for a meeting of sorts shows that maybe the consensus candidate issue is not really realistic, but I'll ask you, what realistic is it if the APC is deciding that they will go with consensus candidates? Does this reflect the real of every person? Does this reflect the nods of everybody in the party or this is what the National Walking Committee is prescribing? Well, the consensus option is part of the constitution of the party. So it's one of the means by which the party can arrive at a decision in an election of this nature. But like I said, it's all about process. Whether you're going to use consensus or you're going to vote or whatever, if the rights and the privileges of individual members are respected and everybody knows that at the end of the day if there is a vote, the result of that vote will be what will be accepted by everybody. Then the incentive for the leaders to reach a consensus will exist because nobody would actually be able to 100% predict the outcome of a vote. But where people already have the processes under control and they know that if they proceed to an election, this is the result I have in my letter. In such a situation, there's really no incentive for consensus, for anybody to give up anything when you can take everything. At that point, depending on the good will of individuals to accommodate one another and help one another. And sadly enough, that is not the spirit of politics in this country. So for the consensus option to work, the same kind of attention to detail, to process that we need to make the electoral option to work well is the same kind of attention to detail that we need that will make the consensus option to work. So if we don't, with all due respect, improve the quality and content of our democracy and have a situation where people can actually vote, vote accounted peacefully, and the respect of the peaceful vote, respected by all actors, no matter their position of power in this society or in the party. Then I'm afraid that this kind of thing that we have seen, we didn't just see it in the APC, we saw it in the PDP, they ended up in court in Anambra, and the general confusion that we see anytime we're doing something that involves voting in this country will continue to be part of our challenges moving into the future. But I believe that if we work hard and we are determined to actually bring about the expansion and purity of the democratic space in this country, it is something that is achievable if we work at it and it can be achieved. I spoke with the senior advocate of Nigeria on Friday before the congresses and I asked him what he thought about the position of the APC going into the congress, knowing the internal crisis that the party is already facing. I'm sure that you know about the tribunal that dismissed the joint petition, you know, of Jagade, which was of the PDP, and of course the ondo state governor, you know the results of that judgment and of course what the tribunal said. But Bani Red did say that if the issue was not settled and the APC went into the congress, he somewhat predicted what happened over the weekend. Let's take a listen to what he said and then when we come back, I'll have you speak on it. Of course right now as we are talking, APC is supposed to start its congresses tomorrow. I can take care of your contradiction. They have no register to do any congress. So they are saying they want to do consensus. But what consensus is that all parties must agree, must consent to their arrangement. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I need to take you back. Did you say that the APC does not have a register? The APC has been conducting, as we all know, it's been in the news, that they have been re-registering members. Where are they registering them? Where's the register? No, registering is different from a register. You think a register can go away? Have you compiled it? Is it credible? The people who have access to it will file for the integrity of it. Before you can have a transparent process, there must be a credible register and done by all the stakeholders. I can tell you without fear of contradiction that there is nothing like that on ground as I'm talking to you. It's even so bad that they do not even have congresses at the local government at what level. They will conduct anything tomorrow. Most of the people that they even appointed or nominated as prime state congress committee team, most of them just arrived a day before today and they are the stakeholders that are admitting to that.  Nominations for not letting you screening, not letting you knowing those who will conduct the respective elections in that world.  So you can hear him. He's saying that the whole thing is a sham. Now there are a few things that he said that we can tie to what you had said earlier on, that the fact that people were not being consulted properly, there's no fairness, there's no justice, there's no equity. If the APC had done its due diligence within its members across the country, and don't forget there are calls for Boonee to be sacked by the way because of the outcome of this judgment and the Ondo State Governor. I mean, even Fester Skyamel had asked that he be sacked because he might pose problems. And for the APC not to have continuous court cases dragging in the future, he should step aside. And that's another case in itself. But with all of these things that are happening, I'm wondering to myself, why did the APC go ahead with this Congress? What was the urgency, the need for the urgency to have these Congresses even with the issues that, you know, the party has been facing? Well, first of all, I think that the two issues that you're alluding to are totally separate from each other. They're not the same. If you're talking about the legal drama over the outcome of the Supreme Court judgment in JGD against that period of look, that is a different issue. What people are saying in respect of that is that the party going ahead with its Congresses in the light of the minority opinion in that judgment will impair the outcome. That's the different thing. If you're talking about the preparedness of the party for this exercise and the steps that Bannery was talking about that he said needed to have been done before the Congresses would vote, those are two separate issues. On the question of preparedness and all that, let me say this. We have taken about a year to get to this point where we are today trying to conduct these Congresses since after the dissolution of the last National Working Committee of the party. Now, no matter what you do and you try to go and conduct any exercise in which Nigerian politicians are supposed to assemble and vote and produce a result, except the politicians themselves agree to respect the processes you have set in place. It will be impossible for you to conduct an exercise that will be history. What is the essence of an exercise if they're not going to respect it? It's an exercise in fertility. So why do it if there is no agreement? Why? I mean, look at what we're having to face. We have been doing this since 1999. There is not much difference between what is happening now and what happened when the last executive was set up. It was the same thing.  If you're having general elections now in this country, it's going to be pretty much the same thing. At the end of the day, you have a result. So as long as we... What is the change that the APC promised? What change are you bringing if you're doing the same thing that you accused the People's Democratic Party of doing and we're seeing you do the exact same thing? What is the difference? And I keep asking, what's the difference between the APC and the PDP? Was it just to unseat President Goodlock Jonathan and now it's the same potato-potato? Really, what was the change that was promised? I mean, we don't see it, do we? You see, let me say this to all Nigerians. You keep talking about APC and PDP, but this is your country as well. And these people who are doing this thing are your children, they are your brothers, they are your sisters. These are the same children that were... Some of the people that are taking part in politics today, 20 years ago when we started politics in this country, they were in the secondary school. And this is a culture that they're great up with. What I'm talking about is that as a nation, we ought to work on our entire... The fabric of what we do. Change is not just about the words, it's about what we do. And change is always a painful process. Even within the all-progressive Congress, we have to battle and struggle for change. We cannot just say that because we're a party committed to change, therefore everything will change automatically. No. Change is always a painful process. Why promise something that you do not have? You obviously cannot give what you do not have. You're battling for change, but then you promise to give change. So why promise what you do not have? Again, when you keep talking... I mean, I totally agree with the fact that yes, we as a society need to work to change the course of things, but whatever happened to leading by examples, we're the ones who are following, we're the lead. If the people who are leading us are making promises, they should be at least able to keep some of those promises so that we can at least have some level of trust. But there seems to be none of that in play. No, you're not being factual and you're also not being fair. First of all, the all-progressive Congress has done a lot as a government to try to bring change to the political process in this country. There's no denying that. The whole issue of introducing direct primaries as an option to ensure fairness and all that is something that this party has championed. But what I'm saying is that the all-progressive Congress is a political party. Magnus Abbey is an individual. So if the party says something and Magnus Abbey gets up to go and sabotage what the party has set out to do or do something different, these are individual actors across the country and these actors are Nigerians. So it doesn't matter where you take them to. If this is what they believe and this is how they behave, that is how they're going to behave. The only way we are going to curb this kind of excesses on the part of our political actors and leaders is for us to deliberately work hard to clean up the processes and make it impossible for people to predetermine or try to predetermine the outcome of an election. If you find out, for example, bringing talks to the venue of an election and beating up people will not give you the desired result. Politicians are not going to waste their time bringing talks to the venue. They are going to concentrate on convincing the voters to follow what they want. But if you have a system where you bring talks and you can get a result, you write a result and it to be sustained and all that, then people will go and pursue those shortcuts to give them the desired advantage. I think that what we need to concentrate on now within the party is to learn from some of the mistakes that we are making, improve our processes and try to digitalize some of the processes that we use in our elections. If we do that, I am sure that as the system continues to improve substantially over time, the behavior of our key actors will also improve. That's where I think we need to go. I think that capitalizing on the blame game, talking about politicizing the challenges within our poverty, which spreads across everywhere, it's not going to get us to where we need to go. Where we need to go is to get to a place where our processes will be stronger than those who want to undermine it. For example, in the bank, it's improving its anti-forgery and fraud technologies to try to deter those who would like to take money that does not belong to them. And nine times out of there, they succeed. So I think that if the political parties will also concentrate on improving the political process and every time we do it, we do something that shows that we have learned something from what we did before, and therefore this particular one will no longer be done this way. I believe that over time the electoral system and the political system itself will improve without internal democracy in the party, without the respect for the rights of members, without the respect for the outcome of democratic elections imbibing to anybody, the whole exercise of democracy in this country will continue to be in trouble. I really like your optimism, Senator. It's refreshing. But you said I wasn't being factual. Let's talk about facts. Recently we talked about electronically transmitting our election results, and you saw the position of the Senate, and you're talking about the fact that we were not being fair to the fact that the APC is bringing change or that they have brought some change about. This is the most change that Nigerians have been hopeful for. We've been hoping that some part of our elections will be free, fair and credible. But we saw majority of our Senators, your former colleagues, who said no to electronically transmitting the results. We're still waiting on the House of Representatives on that note hoping that they would be able to change things. There's so many things. And you just started the conversation by saying that this is how we've done electioneering, or this is how internal party politics has been since 1999, and you're telling me that I'm not being fair as to judgments of what is happening within the political party. So please, what is the thing that you can point to to make me hopeful that change has even occurred if we're doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a change? Let me be very, very clear about something. No matter what anybody would say, we have come a long way in the course of trying to improve our electoral processes and our internal party democracy. If you go back to before now, parties didn't even bother with, why are these Congresses important? These Congresses are important because they're the foundation by which the party is going to choose its candidates. But if you remember before now, the leaders of the party simply sat down. If you remember what happened in the MPN and PDP days, the leaders of the party simply sat down and picked up whoever they wanted and submitted the name to INEC, and that was the end of it. But today, because of the various rules and laws that have been put in place over time, people know that that is no longer possible. And now, even when you submit the name of the candidate, you have all the old issues of cogent and verifiable reasons. You can't change them and all that. There is a lot that has happened in the system that has brought us to where we are today. And those are part of the improvements that are taking place. You see, improvement in the system is not...  If you want the child every day, you will not notice that something is changing.  So that is what is happening to our democracy. Today, we are having a debate about electronic transmission of resource. We didn't have this debate 10 years ago. We didn't have it 20 years ago, but we have it today. So that's where we are now. The desire to improve, the knowledge that we must improve, everybody knows that what we're doing needs to be done better. And even the senators that you're saying disagreed, they did not disagree over the fact that this was not necessary or this was not desirable or this will not help the elections to get better. I think the fulcrum of what they were disagreeing over was to see whether the technological environment in the country is sufficient to support the electronic transmission of results. Which INEC has clearly come out to say it is something that they have done and something that they can do. So I believe that at the end of the day, that issue will be resolved in favor of a better process and not against. Finally, let's go to river state. I want to close on that note. Now, the APC in river state has had its fair share of troubles, like I've said. Different state experiencing problems here and there. Now, you have asked your followers not to participate in that congress, what is the fate of those people who have not participated because it looks like they're going to lose out. I'm going to take you back to 2019 where the APC lost out on all of its tickets during the elections, making the opposition to have the upper hand. What is the fate of the APC in river state with all of this that's happening within the party? How does the party hope to consolidate and be on its feet to be able to take on the PDP come 2023? Well, first of all, it's a misrepresentation of facts to say that I asked my supporters to boycott the congress. That is not correct. They were not allowed to participate because they could not get access to forms. They were not registered and revalidated. Like Muse said, we had no knowledge of where the register was and which register was going to be used. We simply were shot out of the process. Now, across this country, let me give you the example of river state. In river state, you have over 8,000 and something word positions in the party at the word level, which is the elections that were going to be held. Now, if each of these positions are being contested by, say, a minimum of two persons, you have over 16,000 potential nominees to take part in the election. Now, the committee that came to the states to sell forms to members directed that each of these persons who intend to take part in that congress should come physically to the party office and identify themselves before they are given one form. That means that a minimum of 16,000 people would have been expected. Now, when they got to the secretary, no supporter of the minister came to the secretariat to get the form. All the people who came from all across the states were those who are put an unquote seen as not being part of the minister's faction. And so they spent the night there. They had paid people to give them forms. They went to the banks. They paid. The party had said that those who went to the supreme court the last time who were not given forms should be given forms based on their old receipts. When they brought the receipts, the people given the forms said the receipts were faded. They have to go back to the bank to revalidate it. The roads were blocked. It was just one frustration after another and it was totally impossible for them to get the forms because the intention was that they should not be given the forms to participate in the process. That is one. Two. I'm coming, Maria. Now, even before that, the party at the national level had directed based on the report of its own registration and revalidation appeal committee that came to River State had directed that the registration and revalidation exercise in rivers and five other states should resume the committee that was directed to come and oversee the registration of members refused to show up. The party now directed another committee to go back to River State and carry out that exercise. That committee was never publicly authorized by the party to do so. And so while members of the party were in the state mobilizing for registration and revalidation, people arrived to begin to sell forms for congresses.  My asking my supporters not to go there is because if they had gone there, the outcome of it would have been violence. So do you think that you're being targeted? They have both forms. They have no means of participating in the process. What do they be doing there? So do you think that your people, your followers and the people who are opposed to the minister's faction, do you think that you're being targeted? Do you think that it's a deliberate thing from the national to shut those members of your party out? Well, it is clear that there are some godfathers and some supermembers who are stronger than the party because how else do you explain the situation where on the 14th of July, the caretaker committee, the extraordinary convention committee of the party issued a public directive that was contained in the public statement. And this was casually and deliberately discarded by the powers that be. And then again, when you get up to the point of registration, despite all that was happening, the caretaker committee was unable to tell the lady to give these people time and at least give them forms. But later that night, they sent a hundred forms to me. How do you send a hundred forms to me when you are insisted that everybody who is contesting must come to the secret by themselves? And then 12 hours before the beginning of the election, you send me a hundred forms. How did they get those hundred forms? Where else in this country did you see thousands of people through to any party secret anywhere in Nigeria to go and collect forms one by one to take part in a congress that was mainly two days away? Where did that happen in Nigeria? The only place that happened was in River State. So when people do things that are wrong, you do things to oppress other people. You do things without any recourse to any sense of justice or history. This was the same thing that was done that resulted in the case that went up to the Supreme Court. It is the same style. Nothing has changed that is being brought back in 2021. So some of these questions, you need to ask the leader of the party in the state and that's the Minister of Transportation. I was going to close on that note. I was going to ask, so why are you still in the APC if you feel this oppressed, if you feel like an outsider, if you feel that someone is deliberately trying to push you out? Again, do you think that the Minister of Transportation is targeting you as a person in closing? We need to go. First of all, I joined the APC Voluntary. I have a copy of the party constitution. I was a member of the Nigerian Senate when I came from the PDP on the floor of the Senate. That was not a little sacrifice. I almost lost my life to establish the APC in River State. And so nobody, let me repeat for emphasis, nobody has the right or the power to push me out of the party and I'm not going anywhere. I will stay in the party, we will fight for our rights and we will ensure that the right thing is done in the All Progressive Congress in River State. And anybody who is sensible should realize that by now it will be impossible to overcome the determination of members of this party to see that the right thing is done. Nobody can drive over the rights of others and believe that it will be business as should be. It is not going to be. Well, Senator Magnus Abbey, thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us and being part of the conversation. We'll take a short break and when we return, former chairman of INEC at Tahiru Jega is in the news again and this time is advising Nigerians not to vote for the PDP and the APC. Stay tuned.