The Meat Mafia Podcast

Mike
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[00:00:00] Cool. Yeah. Is that cool for you? Yeah. Are you Sweet.

I'm gonna launch a pod in January. Really? Yeah, I'm still working on naming and stuff. Is it gonna be associated with Jasper or just kind of solo? At first it was gonna be like a Jasper thing or a me thing, but I really wanted it to just be its own thing. Yeah, I think it's smart. It'll be like the placeholder name, which it won't be.

I was playing with awareness type stuff, but A W A I R. It doesn't look as cool written down as you'd think. Okay. Like less is more. Hmm. It was like, I, I, I'm always in addition, like, you know, get the shit outta your food. Get the shit outta your water. Simplify your life. Yep. Like I'm a ruthless simplifier.

Yeah. Cut it all out. Addition by subtraction. Yeah. See you brother. Sounds good. Thanks dude. Alright, let's see. Um, I love that. Okay. Like this more or less, and we're recording too, so we can Great. We can just rip whenever. That's good. Let's do it. I talk for the edit. So you're, you're the, uh. You're the DJ.

You're the facilitator. Yes, sir. I've got all the [00:01:00] power over here. Dude, I was doing a crazy deep dive on your Notion page. It was your I think your personal one mm hmm where you kind of just like lay out your timeline Okay, my website. Yeah, it's like 1990 born and then like every step in between there from you, you know going to school and then Launching Jasper, so it was super helpful for for podcast prep.

I'm like this guy's Done all the work. I was spending years like Wanting to build a personal website. Yeah, and it was just too overwhelming and all the guys in my you know entrepreneur worlds They have these fancy personal branding websites speak with me work. I could speak I could work I'm like, I don't do any of that shit.

So I'm like, I just yeah threw it on notion hosted it After years of like thinking about a personal website and designers and developers It was like one afternoon at a cabin in the mountains in British Columbia After skiing one day, that whole site came together in like two, three hours. Dude, I loved [00:02:00] it.

It was so simple. I've been playing with the concept. It'll be the craziest thing of all time, but making, actually have it designed. But making Jasper's website just a Notion page. Really? Just a simple, or even like a Google doc. Being like, we make the world's best air purifier, like, we're busy making the best product.

Not making fancy graphics and fluffy marketing to sell you some bullshit. So just like, bring the website down. If you look at most websites, 95 percent of the shit on most pages don't have to be there. And because it is there, it's hard to find the shit that actually matters. Yeah. Addition by subtraction.

Yeah, totally. Um. Yeah, I think in a world of flashy, you know, three second clips, ten second clips, everything's changing quickly, things getting thrown in your face, sponsored ads, paid ads, it's like, let's just Compete on simplicity like a white page. I know we're recording, but obviously we can edit this out Yeah, for sure.

I mean what I'm about to say. So do we give you the code yet? Um, I think. Somebody, one of you guys emailed. Yes. Asking for a code. Yeah, I [00:03:00] emailed Um, I saw a response. The code will be Meat Mafia for sure. Okay, cool. Do you know what day the episode will drop? I actually think I'll drop a Wednesday of next week.

Oh quick. Yeah. Cool. I'll look it up right now just because. And then, because then we can do something that works really good. Cool. Little plug. So basically it's like Minimal Jasper talking. Yeah, then what I like to do is so let's say it drops August 12th, for example Yeah between August for the first week after it drops for your like most loyal listeners We give them a 20 percent off discount for the first week, but then after the week, it's 10 percent off forever I love it.

So just like a very fat juicy discount for those who want to take action and then for anybody else It's still 10 percent forever since I switched to this model Sales from podcast episodes. It's literally like a maybe a 10x really it's not even in the same stratosphere well, you just have to put a little bit of time pressure on the uh on on the audience to make the purchase and go from The [00:04:00] 10 percent to the 20 percent 10 percent like the new normal like anytime you want to buy something you always know you could get 10 percent off like let me abandoned card or like 10 percent off like every company will give you 10 percent off Jack ended up to 20 percent off A little bit of a time constraint situation.

Yeah. Actually, do I have my bag? Fuck, I wish I did, man, because, it's in my car. The CO2 in this room is not good. Really? It's not good. I'm gonna actually keep my CO2 detector on me. Really? It's not good. Oh, wow. I'm tempted to get it. Do you want to get it? Yeah. Do it. Um, I'm gonna try to get on the Wi Fi now, so I can check and see if you guys responded.

And we can, uh, we can rip it when you're back. No, don't worry if we responded. Like, it'll be live even if you don't reply. Okay. Cool. It's just the dates. Cool. The air is not good in here. I love it.[00:05:00]

Oh, it's in here.

Is that it right there? Oh, no, you got it.

[00:06:00] Yeah, that's me.

Is that my car? It's not my car. So, we're in 878, that's what the CO2 is right now. And I guess you'll have, uh, me running out. Um, so I ran out of here because I'm like, yo, the CO2 is high in here. So, I'm not even gonna look, it's still at 878. It readjusts every few minutes. Um, I think it's probably about 1, 200.

Give me a guess, 1, 200? I'm gonna guess around 1, 200. Wow. Maybe even a little more. Twelve to fourteen hundred. And it's gonna keep going up. But this room does not breathe very good. And I always talk a big game about being calibrated to CO2. But over a thousand would be like, it's high. I always tell people,

Teaser
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the one bad part about getting a Jasper, investing in clean air is you become an air snob.[00:07:00]

Now bad air becomes intolerable. So this is not something that, CO2 can't be fixed by an air purifier. It can only be fixed by ventilation. So, doors, windows, or like an active vent. So I'm just gonna leave it here. Here, here, hand that to me. I'm gonna have it facing me. And when it goes up, I'm gonna have you guess again.

Okay. See if you Well, I was guessing based on the next state anyway. So we'll see. Oh, on the next one? Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Um, anyway, it's good to have an eye on it. Alright, so you were saying, um, CO2 is So Carbon Dioxide. How did you start going down the CO2 rabbit hole and how it actually affects our body and how we're actually supposed to be?

Um, feeling like my first experience with, um, with air quality was actually, I was preparing for a triathlon, going to get a bike fitting. And this guy starts to explain to me air quality on just like when you should and shouldn't be training outside. So he was just going so deep on air [00:08:00] quality. I was like, man, I've literally, I've never had anyone talk to me about anything so passionately in my life.

And then. Fast forward a year, coming down to Austin, a lot of people in the health and wellness space, some people starting non toxic home products and things like that, start having a lot more conversations around mold, but I haven't really heard anyone talk about CO2 um, in the home, so I'm curious. So yeah, CO2, um, CO2 is really interesting because, yeah, it's carbon dioxide, and you know, they, they, they simply, you know, have you ever heard that humans breathe in oxygen and we breathe out CO2?

Yep. And that trees breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. Yep. It's very interesting because, So air is 78 percent nitrogen, Uh, 21 percent oxygen, It's about 0. 4 percent CO2, And then a little bit of argon and some other gases. So when we breathe, general air is about 0. 4 percent CO2. When we breathe out air, it's only about 4 percent CO2.

We think it's like we're breathing in oxygen, it's only [00:09:00] 21 percent oxygen. And then you think when we breathe out it's like all CO2, it's only about 4 percent CO2. And it's about, that gets displaced with um, humidity and yeah, CO2, then the oxygen comes down a little bit and the nitrogen comes down a little bit.

But like that it's so funny like the things that we like learn we breathe in oxygen we breathe out co2 It's like sometimes it's I love simplification. Yeah, but this is Oversimplified to the point where it's no longer accurate, right? So the cool thing about co2 is it tells you Basically the the layman's the human body's feeling of a high co2 level So you notice my reaction was the co2 is high in here An average reaction would be it's stuffy.

Hmm You It's stuffy. So what would be a symptom of stuffy? It could actually make you feel like it's warmer than it is because you're feeling suffocated It could be a little bit difficult to breathe. You could find yourself not being able to talk for you know I bet you will be like Gasping a little bit on this pod.

Yeah [00:10:00] It also gives you a good sense like when you create a home or an office building a room is designed for a certain amount of people so um If there's too many people in a home, the CO2 goes up. Uh, outdoor CO2 is about 400. Okay. A good amount of indoor CO2 is like 575 to 750, 800. What would a casino's be?

You think casino would be I think really low. Really low, right? I think really low. Um, because high CO2 would equ would create fatigue. Mm hmm. Low CO2 would make you feel more alert. Mm. So I actually shot some content yesterday in my car. In 17 minutes, my CO2 went from 500 to 2, 000. Wow. And that was not with recirculate mode on, that was with the doors and windows shut.

So often on a long road trip when people get tired, and you're like, I need to crack a window and get some cold air or fresh air. It's like, no, no, no, you're choking on CO2 and you need to purge it. Wow. So the fun thing [00:11:00] about this is because I am calibrated to the carbon dioxide, I have a very, I'm able to adjust my environment accordingly.

I don't actually usually need that anymore. I just keep it with me to like, constantly stay calibrated and be able to show people. Like, I will be shocked if our CO2 stays under 800 or 900 here. Has it gone up yet? It's gone up. Are we over a thousand? As close as you can get to without going over a thousand.

But it's getting there. 999. Yeah. So, I think it'll probably pop up above that. Cause we're in here. And yeah, it will go up for sure, like so a thousand's kind of that threshold number where has you go above a thousand That's where the brain fog fatigue you know, it's sort of similar like Air water the good thing about your audience is obviously anyone who's listening to you and your pod are very Generally very health and wellness aware and very food aware.

Yeah, so all the same things that apply to to food [00:12:00] quality typically apply to water and air. So it's like, you want to get pure, real food, as unfucked with as possible, more than You don't need it. You don't want to get your food extra jacked up with the like Supplements and more stuff put in your food.

You just want real pure food. Yeah with water You just want you know natural clean filtered water high quality whole foods and Clean water are perfect has their has they come yeah air is similar of course we pollute it Indoor and outdoor, um, but you want to kind of just go back to basics. So all the same things that you could get by drinking unfiltered water is the same kind of stuff that you would get by breathing polluted air.

Teaser
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So take me back when you first started going down this rabbit hole of air quality. The rabbit hole began in 2013. So before getting into air purification, air filtration and stuff, I was, I was the mold man. [00:13:00] It was so funny. Really? In 2013? Yeah. Wow. Uh, 2013. Cause I feel like that, that trend is just now starting to pick up.

And it's funny cause back then, and it's part of the reason I got out of the business, but there was two sayings in that industry. Number one was it was the mold rush. And number two is mold is gold. Because if you are a regular contractor, or doing some demolition, maybe to gut a kid, a bathroom. You're gonna get a thousand bucks just to like tear out the vanity, tear out the floor, the, the toilet, put it in a bin, and haul it away, maybe a thousand bucks.

There's a, now, if there's a little patch of mold this big, it could be 15, 000. It's the same job. Well, all that changes is Hollywood. You put an orange, poly, orange, or clear, basically you seal the bathroom in, airtight, and that's it. You put a negative, an air scrubber, which is basically a badass air purifier.[00:14:00]

Uh, you seal off that room, and you double bag the material. You wipe all the surfaces down with an antimicrobial. So, most of the mold removal job is the setup. And it's not to say that, um, mold remediation, restoration doesn't need to be taken seriously. However, um, A lot of the teaching was Hollywood. It was the perception of value.

So if people get five quotes to remove mold, it's not uncommon to see quotes range from 3, 000 to 20, 000. And it doesn't nec sometimes, The 3, 000 guy is doing the exact same job as the 20, 000 guy. He's just packaging it with less fear. And so, do you think that fear is warranted? Like, is mold as bad for people as most people are out there saying it is?

It's kinda, I, I, mold is an allergen, much like pollen. If you're allergic to pollen, pollen can really destroy the quality of your life. If you're not allergic to pollen, you may not even notice it, so it's an allergen. Uh, mold is everywhere, so when we would go into a house and test [00:15:00] the air quality for mold, we test indoors, and we also test outside.

That's called a control sample, and you're trying to see the difference between the indoor mold levels and the outside mold levels. So, what happens is, um, after rain or high humid days, but no matter what, there's always thousands of mold spores outside, However, outside we have the sun, with its UV light and UV rays, we have wind, which has naturally occurring hydroxyl radicals that basically, the sun and the wind and the trees are the most ultimate air purifier of all time.

Yep. It works perfectly. Unfortunately, like this place, we build our homes and our buildings very tight. Yep. The reason we do that, especially since the 70s, is energy efficiency. So the idea is if we build a really, really tight structure. To keep the heat in in the winter, and keep the cool in in the summer, it'll be cheaper to maintain the thermal comfort of the home.

The byproduct of that is, is everything gets trapped in here. [00:16:00] So, I remember my parents hosted an event, they have a 3600 square foot house, and they had maybe 40 people in their home. The CO2 went from 700 to 3500. The crazy thing is I left my monitor in there. I've done a few different studies. They actually it was like a few day long event But the co2 in a home if you have a large amount of guests over You know, there's a lot more co2 than the home is used to it stayed high for a few days Hmm, you'd think that it would like drop when when the people leave the co2 would go back to normal.

Well, it doesn't That's why I'm always like at people's events and stuff like opening doors and windows and cracking it and like You gotta purge that CO2. Otherwise it's just, yeah, it's horrible for your sleep quality. Terrible for brain fog. I'm not even going to quote a study, because there's infinite of them.

But if you google like, air quality, or CO2, and then anything. Whether it's, uh, [00:17:00] sleep, performance, chess players moves, um, test scores. Like every conceivable, uh, conceivable thing. Metric of recovery or cognition or performance Like a grandmaster in chess their game theory optimal moves go way down with poor air quality SAT scores go way down When people track their sleep with like an aura or a whoop or something their sleep scores are heavily correlated to air quality as well Because like it's I call I call air during the day.

I call it thinking fuel and at night. I call it sleep fuel.

Short 1 - performance with clean air
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Mm hmm So, do you, is it more of an acute thing where you go inside, inside is generally worse than being outside for air quality, so you're indoors, you're exposed to 3, 500 metric for the CO2, and then it will just affect you for like 24 hours, or are you talking about something that could affect you for days or weeks at a time?

A lot of air [00:18:00] stuff is more chronic than it is, like mold for example, usually in like a flash mold exposure situation. Generally speaking, you're not going to have a problem. It's when you have like high indoor levels of mold, uh, whether it's visible, physical patch of black mold, or just moldy air. Cause like when everyone, anyone who's talking about mold being a problem.

They're really talking about an air problem because you're not eating the mold. You're not drinking the mold. You're not rubbing the mold on your skin So how is the mold getting your body? It's because the mold is in the air In a cold climate during the winter a mold goes dormant with heat and humidity mold gets Awaken basically And when you get disturbed whether that's from Subwoofer or construction across the street, but when the mold gets agitated and disturbed It thinks it's under attack, and it releases these mycotoxins into the air It's basically like you know mold is like [00:19:00] ancient wise intelligent stuff, right?

If people are into mushrooms out there mushrooms and mold are kind of the same thing. It's that same sort of fungal intelligence and um It's and it's very good at surviving so when it feels threatened That's when it really releases into the air we breathe it in and we have problems.

Short 2 - Mold characteristics
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So to go back to your question of like Is it worth the hype of being scared of I think it's worth the hype of being aware of but if you a Lot of people are overplaying the fear.

Like I said, it was called mold is gold and the mold rush So whether that's detox or restoration, it's very sad the amount of people who Move into a home, get their house tested, someone's unwell, Someone comes in, convinces them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars gutting their whole house, Moving them out of their home for six months, When they didn't really have a mold problem in the in the first place.[00:20:00]

So, if you have a physical patch of black mold, it's probably stachybotrys, which is one of the most harmful molds, and it will smell very moldy. This is a big deal. We need to get it removed properly. But a lot of people are just, you know, they're doing a little dust sample on their carpet, or on like a surface like this.

Like, if we take that dust there and we send it to the lab, there'll be some amount of mold spores in it. Yeah. So But I wouldn't then go say we need to gut this whole home because it's a moldy house because mold is outside, right? Mold is everywhere. It's in your air. And often the best way to test air is to test dust.

Because if you think about indoor dust, Dust does not come from the surface. It comes from the air. It does not just like pop out of the air. It's not coming out of the air. It's accumulating from the air. And dust is a symptom of poor air. If you have clean air at home, low CO2, good filtration, you'll almost never see dust accumulate.

Can you give me a breakdown of like what does good air quality look like? [00:21:00] So you've talked about CO2. Are there other components that go into good air quality? Yeah, so the Five factors of IAQ, which is indoor air quality is temperature relative humidity PM 2.5 VOCs and CO2 mm. Um, so VOC means volatile organic compound.

I'll go deeper into each one. CO2 carbon dioxide, I pm 2.5 means particulate matter under 2.5 microns in size. Hmm. So what that means is these are the little teeny particles. That are small enough to enter your lungs and your bloodstream. Wow. So, this is the size This is when you see like, um, air quality alerts, pollution, wildfire smoke.

They Sometimes they use a metric called AQI, but it's mostly PM 2. 5 that they're reporting on. That is the most harmful particle size. And then of course you have the CO2. So the VOCs is the volatile organic compounds. Simply put, this is chemicals and gases. [00:22:00] So this is In this room, for example, many things are off gassing VOCs.

Now, it doesn't always off gas forever. Typically, a product, whether it's drywall, a couch, a table, a baby's crib, a shirt, furniture, it has a certain period of off gassing. This carpet, um, and that is typically a little bit sneakier than PM2. 5 and CO2 because you can't really smell. Um, the chemicals in the gases, they're very, very fine.

Um, but the thing is, the word VOC is kind of tricky. Because there's actually hundreds or thousands, like benzene, toluene, formaldehyde. These are all different VOCs. So not every VOC is the same. And most sensors detect total VOCs. They're not actually breaking it apart of like, is this formaldehyde or is this benzene?

You don't really know, um, You have to do really expensive lab [00:23:00] testing to sort of dig into it, but broadly speaking in a home environment, uh, the other source of VOCs is gonna be, um, Cleaning products and personal care products. So your, your method window cleaner, your, your Lysol, Clorox, Um, the better products actually off gas way less.

So, some of the people you talked about in Austin that are like creating, you know, better health and wellness, skin care, cleaning products, whatever. If it's actually good, it's neat, because I'm not an expert in those things, but I'm able to see how that translates to impacting the air. Um, and then, yeah, the PM 2.

M1 Start
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5 is the, Cook cooking is by far the number one polluter in a home. Not even close. Wow. Not even close. That's so interesting. Is it's mostly just like oils in particular matter coming off of stovetop or So most people's range hoods don't work. Hmm. If you go home, there's a tissue test I always [00:24:00] recommend So you take a Kleenex or paper towel?

Try your range hood on fan speed one. Most people use their range hood on the lowest setting, not the highest setting because it's pretty loud on the highest setting. And see if it even pulls it up. It should grab it from like several inches away. Most people's range hood? Oh, there's no shot mine does. No?

There's no shot, yeah. I mean, our, our fire alarm goes off almost as soon as we turn the Even with the range hood on? Yeah, with it on full blast, so So, with the range hood, it's, is the thing even pulling air? I've seen some that actually blow air. Wow. Number two, where is it venting? So a lot of people, it actually just vents into the cabinet above.

Short 3 - range hoods
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Some it vents into a wall cavity, sometimes it vents into the attic. You want that venting outside, that's the whole point of a vent. To get it out of the building. Um, so the range hood is a problem. Depending on the outdoor pollution and temperature, you know, it's pretty hot in Austin right now like you're not it's not that nice to open up your windows [00:25:00] Yeah, like you can't you kind of need to keep the place closed in the AC cranking and it's still usually too hot totally So I cook outside a lot not only do I barbecue outside a lot But we actually have like this jet boil camping stove And we often go down to the lake park and we do our bacon and eggs or our steaks Outside.

That's Like, the kids love it. That's the, that's absolutely the way to do it. Dudes, there's nothing worse, uh, you don't have kids, do ya? No, not yet. So, there's nothing worse than, Man, 3pm becomes 10pm, Like this. It already happens, but with kids, where does it go? It's like, you pick them up from school, Then you're rushing to like, cook this dinner, And then clean it, And now it's like, 7:30 30, And then you gotta put them to bed, and then that's 8. 30, Like, what just happened between 3 and 9? And, no kid, I mean, myself included, I don't like sitting at the table. It's not like, I have a two year old and a four year old. We're not exactly having like, Socratic discussions about how our day went today.

Kids just want to play [00:26:00] all the time. Yeah. So it's like, all this time goes into cooking. Then trying to force them to sit still. Then clean. Then there's no time to play. Um, what do we do? So it's like, if we cook outside, they can play and run around the whole time. You know, as we're grilling, they're coming by and they're snacking.

From an air quality perspective, we're not polluting inside at all. And it's awesome.

Short 4 - cooking outside with kids
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I noticed that like, as I started to go to the park and cook more, more people are doing it. Really? It's like, oh, what the heck? Yeah. I think just even eating food outside is so much more enjoyable than eating food inside.

So much better. Everything's better outside. Yeah, and I am very okay So I'll finish on the cooking piece because I think that's important. Yeah There's two two factors. It's not just the So it's not just that, like, even if you're, of course, if you're eating crappy food in a nonstick pan, and horrible oils, that's the worst.

And you're gonna see that in your air quality. But let's say you're using [00:27:00] avocado oil or high quality tallow, and grass fed, grass finished steak from a local farmer, and a cast iron or a stainless steel pan. We're doing all the right stuff. We're doing it all. Your air quality is still getting very polluted.

Like, crazy. So, if you smell the food, In the house, it means you've really polluted your air. You shouldn't smell your cooking, because what happens is, it's not just that you're breathing the meat. When you take protein in high heat, it creates byproducts. So PAH is the big one, called polysilic aromatic hydrocarbons.

When we would test a home that's been damaged from wildfire smoke, That's what we're looking for. Uh, hexavalent chromium is another one. That's not as prevalent with cooking. Um, but basically you get sulfur dioxide is another one. So you get all these, um, chemical reactions and byproducts of the high heat in the protein that are more harmful than the food itself.

Also, even just the, um, whether it's bacon or, you [00:28:00] know, Spicy peppers. You ever, do you, you spicy food guy? So, you know, if you're cooking with hot peppers, you might be able to eat it and it's okay, but when you breathe it, it's very uncomfortable. Dude, there's a, there's like a spice blend that I use for my steaks and every time that I cook with it, it gets thrown up into the air and I, I start coughing or You obviously like eating it.

Yeah, it's, it tastes amazing. So when you put the food in your mouth, It lands in your digestive system. That thing is awesome. It's so cool. It's really good at breaking things down, filtering stuff, keeping what you need, getting rid of the rest. It's awesome. When you inhale it, it goes into your respiratory system.

It's not a digestive system. So that's where you irritate all your airways. It's hor asthmatics can really feel it. Um, but any even if you're super healthy, your respiratory system doesn't really like Like. We didn't have indoors until very recently. Yeah. So now all of a sudden we got these little air tight Tupperware boxes, [00:29:00] and then we have high heat and smoke in there, and we hang out and we live in there.

So, it really impacts our respiratory system. So, that's kind of like, it's kind of neat to think like, if I eat it, I have a digestive system. If I breathe it, it's respiratory. Yeah, and those two systems are not built the same. Yeah, so what what other factors you said cooking? Is there anything else that's cleaning?

Pets? Pets. Um, and then outdoor air becomes indoor air. That's where the air It's hard to believe that like it's like where do you think all this air came from? Well outside of course So what do you have outside? You still have pollen, you still have mold, and usually when we test a home for pollen There's often more pollen inside than outside Because the pollen comes in, and it gets embedded into the carpet, into the clothing, into the furniture, into the mattress, the insulation.

And then anything that can get wet, can absorb air. So, you know, if it's like a hard surface, like, like this thing, If we pour a water drop on there, it's not going to be a problem. It's not going to absorb. Um, so that means this is going to be easy. You could clean [00:30:00] this no matter what, but if this carpet got spilt, you know, if we spilt some wine on here, we're going to wipe it up.

If we spilt some wine on this carpet, we likely can never get it all out. So anything that can absorb water absorbs air. And unless you're like deep cleaning your house and using a HEPA vacuum, It's very hard to get it out. So if you don't address things, um, at the air level, then they get deeply embedded.

So, cooking, cleaning, and personal care products, hairsprays, um, um, sh shower products, and like all these new natural soaps and, um, conditioners and all that do make a huge difference. Like if you're using the just regular stuff you get off the shelf at CVS or Walgreens, even though I'm sure they carry some better stuff now too, Mm.

And like, you go and blow dry your hair, it's gonna be like, off the chain. Your whole house is gonna spike. If you're using some better stuff, then it won't.

Medium 1 end
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I'm so interested how you, how you got down this path. So, I know you had done some remediations after wildfires up in Canada. Floods, [00:31:00] fires, mold, and hurricanes.

Okay. And was that kind of the spark for you, to be like, Wow, this is really actually impacting how people are living and experiencing, like, their environments, They have to deal with any sort of air quality issues, their quality of life is just much less. So it was kind of like a convergent path. Um, In addition to the restoration, we were also doing air quality consulting.

So if you were sick at home and you didn't know why, So usually it would go something like this. You're just like chronically unwell, but you don't necessarily notice it. Maybe it's a cough, puffy eyes, allergies, itchy skin, not sleeping great. Then you go camping. You're like, yo, I feel amazing! And you come back home, and you're like, I feel sick again.

And then this question comes in, is my home making me sick? And then that rabbit hole begins. And maybe you've done the allergy shots, the doctors, the detoxes, you're doing it all! And you still aren't getting better, but then you go camping and you feel great. What's happening here? So in addition to the restoration, [00:32:00] we would do consulting on air quality.

So we'd go to someone's home and if they weren't sure if their house was making them sick, we would do a deep dive in extensive testing in their home to say, Hey, what's lurking here? Mold, general air quality, um, asbestos, airborne bacteria, VOC testing, particulates, dust. So we do a deep assessment. We would test the dust and say, Hey, like.

There's a clear hazard in your home. You might want to deal with this. Um, and it was frustrating because I would test people's air and test their homes and their air was never great. It's kind of like when you go to the doctor and you get a blood test. Man, in Canada, I didn't even know, it's funny, like, it's, I mean, once again, I shouldn't say the states because Austin is this little weird health bubble.

Yeah. Which is great. I'm happy to be in this bubble. It's amazing. Um, but like, to me, it was always just awesome. I'm gonna go get a blood test. I never even thought to ask the question of what are they testing for in my [00:33:00] blood. It was just a blood test. And it was, hey, we'll call you if there's a problem, but otherwise they don't call you.

And then you find out it's like they tested your blood for like four or five things. And then here I got like private medical and they tested my blood for like hundreds of things. I'm like, oh, of course, how did I not realize that? If someone's like, I'm testing my water, my reply is, for what? What are you testing it for?

You could test the water for anything you want. You could test water for THC if you wanted to. Like, you could test anything for anything. So, if someone's like, I'm getting my carpet tested, I'm getting my air tested, my water tested, you've got to follow up with a, for what? Um, I went off track there. Where were we?

Where were we going with that? Um, so basically, ah, so, how did I get into this stuff? Yeah, how'd you get into it? Yeah, so we would, we would assess the home, and it typically wasn't optimal. But it was, by, if you look at like, Standards, it was fine. [00:34:00] And this was after some sort of, uh Adjacent to, same timing.

Okay, cool. Throughout 2013 to like, for five, six years. Gotcha. Is when I was in restoration and air testing. Gotcha. They go very much hand in hand. Gotcha. Um, so it was frustrating because, also when we would do mold removal, and then we would mold, fire, flood, and then at the end of the house you would test the air.

Give them a green light for the family to move back in. But like, what the insurance companies would consider like, a pass, it still was not optimal. And I'm like, oh, this is just like, the doctor. Like, they're not going for optimal. They're only going for not critical. But, optimal is what we should be shooting for.

So, um, the big genesis of Jasper started in 2016 in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Biggest fire in Canadian history. So we went out there, we restored about 150 homes. It was a wild time. Um, we would restore a home, and then, I remember one [00:35:00] family in particular called Tanya, she's like the most front, front of mind, but they got a call that the, um, their baby was in the hospital.

And whenever we would finish a job, we would always test the house and make sure it's good to go. So we're like, what's going on here? Well, um, what happens is, even though we would clean the house of wildfire smoke, we The outdoor air comes back inside so you clean the whole house, but there was a wildfire outside So the air is still polluted and it recontaminates the house.

So baby's sick again. So I called the insurance company I'm like, hey guys, we have this mutual customer Tanya, her baby's back in the hospital. What should we do? And they're like, sorry, like We're paying you they signed off already. So sad too bad. I'm like, whoa, this doesn't feel right Um, so My prop proposed solution was that they go back out of town for another month or so.

At least till the ambient air cleans up, clears up, and then they, we could retest the home, and then they can move back. [00:36:00] Insurance was not having that, and I'm like, I get, it sucked for them too, you know? Yeah. Like, I feel like no one has sympathy ever for the big guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, if they were paying to clean everyone's house twice, our insurance rates would go up, and we would be mad about that.

Right. So, I see where they were coming from. This was unprecedented. They're like, yo, we just paid you tons of money to clean this, what do you mean we're gonna pay you again? Right. But it's still, I'm like, We still got this family with a baby who can't be here. So what we did is we left our commercial grade air scrubbers there.

So, in construction and restoration, we don't call we don't call them air purifiers, we call them air scrubbers. It's like serious heavy duty equipment. It's like if a photocopier in a subwoofer had a baby, that's an air scrubber. I think I saw a picture of it on your website. It's like the red Yeah. The red looking thing.

Yep, that thing. Massive. Super effective. Um Loud? Very loud. But we left three of them in Tanya's house. Within a few hours, air quality levels were good. Luckily, she had a big home. We were able to, like, Put them in the [00:37:00] basement in like unobtrusive spaces mostly where it didn't totally impact their quality of life.

But within a few hours, air quality was back to normal. Baby's healthy, all good. But this kept happening. And then I'm like, yo, we can't leave all of our industrial equipment, we need it for the next jobs. And um, so I'm like, let's just go to like Best Buy, Home Depot, Walmart. Buy a bunch of air purifiers and just gift it to them.

Cause these commercial air scrubbers are like 1200 bucks or so. They're hard to get after a fire. So I'm like, let me just give them all the Walmart stuff. Regular air purifiers, Amazon stuff that you'd be expecting. And um, This should be good. Well, not so fast. Like a couple hours after we swapped out the big boys for the Walmart stuff, the air quality levels were horrible again.

It's like, oh, do these things even work? I wasn't really super air purifier aware as a consumer at this point. And we, I came to, the best [00:38:00] analogy I have for most little portable air purifiers is it's like trying to heat your bathtub with a kettle. It's the best analogy I got. The kettle is awesome at heating water quickly if you're trying to make tea.

But you can't heat your bathtub with a kettle because the water is going to be cooling down Far faster than you can heat it up. It just doesn't work. So it's like you can't pull your boat with a golf cart Sometimes you just need a big truck to get the job done size matters a lot So and then another house we were in I went back to their house to check on things Their kid was not doing so great either and they had unplugged the air scrubber and put it in the closet and they had Even though they had a sick kid, I'm like, yo, Angela, what are you doing?

She's like, I know Mike, I know, but it's so loud, and it's so ugly. So she's like, I know the air is a problem, but she's like, I just can't live with this truck in my living room, and I'm like, I don't blame you. So that was just like a huge lightbulb moment for me. So I'm like, wildfire smoke [00:39:00] is very bad.

It's on the west coast every year. It seems to be trending in the very, very much in the wrong direction, and It's not practical for people to have giant air scrubbers in their home. Then you go and buy little air purifiers that don't do anything. I'm like, we have a problem here. So that's kind of where I set on on my journey, and I felt very, um, trapped.

Hmm. Because if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So being like on the restoration side and the consultant side, I wasn't really in a position to like make change. Hmm. So I'm like, why don't I just invent the product? That I wish I had right now, for these people, after a while, during wildfire season, and um, that's kind of what I did, so I'm like, it needs to be metal, it needs to be powerful like a scrubber, but it needs to be silent, and it needs to be beautiful, because if it's not beautiful, and quiet, then It's never even gonna get used in the first place.

Um, Dyson did a really good job making a beautiful one. Molecule did a [00:40:00] good job making a beautiful one. But they didn't really solve the like, effectiveness power part of it. Um, it was like a bunch of Model 3s when we needed a Cybertruck or something. Yeah. So I was, because I was Most air purifiers you see, these are huge billion dollar companies that sell thousands of products.

They got water filters, they got diffu they, they sell everything. We sell one thing. We only sell, we only do air, and we only have one product. So, that's kind of our unfair advantage, because I was creating the product that I, has, similar to what I would have used for mold remediation, for wildfire smoke, for flood, for hurricanes, um, you know, the, you get bad air, basically a flood.

Um, so yeah, basically the journey happened from being on the restoration side and the air quality consulting side, and just not having a practical solution for people, kind of led me down this path of like, Becoming a little bit of a street engineer, and from just a place of need, [00:41:00] um, went down this path, and now, now we're all in.

How'd you, how'd you go down that rabbit hole of being more engineering focused and product focused, like, really figuring out the nuts and bolts of the functionality, cause it seemed like, from your experience, there were some good products, or, some products out there that seemed good, but it turns out that there's a whole nother, Like tier of quality that you guys have tapped into so I'm curious like how'd you figure out that Delta so Actually, man, there was an eight and a half hour podcast I don't know if you saw it Elon and the Neuralink team on Lex Freeman's pod No, good drop last week I did not put eight and a half hours in but I did listen to part of the Elon stuff.

Yeah And he said something really cool, because Lex Freedman's like, yo, how, how, what is your approach to problem solving? Like, how do you, like, rockets, and space, and moon, and chips in the brain, like, what is the process here? And it actually really resonated. I mean, I'm not putting chips in brains and sending things to space, yet.[00:42:00]

But, uh, the first thing he said was to question the requirements. So, like, the first thing is, like, is there even a problem worth solving here? And if so, what is the actual problem? And just focusing on that. So the focus for me was large industrial air purifiers, big, size does matter, but downside was super loud and super ugly.

Then these little small ones were Cost effective, sure, great, cute, small, whatever, but ineffective. So, it was very clear to me, getting clear on the requirement. I bet you were hovering. We're not going up too much, are we? I just took a peek. Yeah, we're at 991, but it got up to 1019, so. I can tell it's hovering.

Yeah, you can tell that, um, like it, you would be feeling much worse. It's not getting worse. Um, which is good. I'm, I'm, I'm, sub [00:43:00] 1000, we're good. If it gets over a thousand, twelve hundred, we'll have to crack that door. Let some heat in. I like it. Um, so it's all about questioning the requirements first. And then being like, is this an addition or a subtraction situation?

So, you know, a lot of er a lot of people have a hard time inventing things because they're trying to do everything. For example, we have no app. No app is a bug. But no EMF is a feature. So we have no Wi Fi, no Bluetooth, no EMF. Feature. But if it's no app, it's a bug. So it's just a positioning thing. And it's like understanding what's really important.

Um, I was very clear that it had to be, it had to have hit 400 CFM. So for context, a lot of consumer air purifiers are like 880 CFM. 70, 80. 60 to 90 is fairly normal at top speed. Hmm. Jasper's about a 400. Wow. And Air [00:44:00] Scrubber could be like 600 plus. Okay. But we're closer to that category. Oh, yeah. So if a Dyson's 87 CFM and we're 420, it's about 5x.

Wow. Um, then the other piece was metal. I refuse to make this thing out of plastic. Hmm. Because if you make it out of one ton of plastic that's manufactured, Creates three tons of carbon in the atmosphere, so if everybody in the world bought a cheap plastic air purifier It's like the amount of carbon we would be putting in the atmosphere.

We would not this would be a net negative Also, those things only have a one year warranty because they only last a year or two The only reason we can afford to have a lifetime warranty is because Jasper should last about 30 years. Wow, it's designed You know I hate planned obsolescence with a passion.

Yeah, totally So I I think the So, I was very clear, and it's like, it just came down to understanding what is an air purifier. For us, it's a steel tube, high quality fan, high quality motor, [00:45:00] a good filter, a good sensor. And that's it. We don't have bells and whistles and ionizers and UV lights and apps. Man, I saw dishwashers have apps now.

Dishwashers have apps. What is going on? Why do we need that? We do not. Yeah. Um, and so first it just came from being ruthlessly clear. On what needed to be done here. So then what I did is I went down the path of, I ordered about, I, I took me, the whole engineering process was over three years. Wow. So, the first thing was let me go find every air purifier factory that I can.

I also started, um, visiting cities with the worst air. So I went to Hong Kong and Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Mexico City. I'm like, I didn't go to Delhi, they have the worst worst air. But I'm like, let me go where the air is horrible. Wow. And get a sense of what's going on here. So, have you been to China?

Are those places where you feel like you need to wear a mask outside? [00:46:00] Um, I feel like I need to stay inside. Inside? With an air purification system running. Really? Cause the mask is suffocating too. Yeah. So, um, I could, I could see why you would want that though. Right. Um, but I mean, I just prefer not to go to those places.

Yeah. I've only ever been to Hong Kong, and the air quality was not good at all. It's not good. Yeah. Um, so, in, I remember when I was in like, even Singapore, which didn't have that bad of air, Um, Kuala Lumpur, um, Bangkok, like, man, air, air, in Asia? Air purifiers are everywhere. They're much more air aware.

Probably by 10 20 years. So, if you go to like a bank, it wouldn't be uncommon that like every single banker's room would have an air purifier in there. When you would go to like a restaurant, they often have these like 6 foot tall air purifiers. Two foot wide industrial air purifiers because they know the same way we know we want to heat and cool our air They are more aware that we also need to filter shit out [00:47:00] Hmm, is that a population density issue or is that them just having like a bunch of cars or is that natural?

Do you mean why the air is bad? Yeah, why the air is worse. Um, a lot of it is coal burning Like in Beijing and stuff, they still use a lot of coal. Uh, they do a lot of agricultural burning. Um, there is density, but there's a lot less. I mean, regulations for environmental stuff is a, is a, is a really nice privileged problem to have, but if you don't have heat, you don't really give a shit if it pollutes the air.

I just want to be not cold. So I'm willing to burn coal. Um, so yeah, people generally are, uh, It's a lack of, it's not a lack of, um, awareness, but because they are more aware. But yeah, a lot of the, the bad air and pollution is just like no regulation at all. Therefore, like, everyone's just off gassing like crazy, you know.

There'll be factor, factories and industrial, like for [00:48:00] us, you know, the industrial production, the factories, usually are separate from the cities. We know this here, we don't really have big smokestacks downtown. Also because of our land prices it would be prohibitively expensive, so you'd want to manufacture further out.

But also regulations, like you couldn't get permitted to be downtown Austin and build your factory. Um, so a lot of them it's just like, They don't have such regulations, so their polluting is very close to city centers. Um, yeah, car density for sure is a factor. Coal burning and then agricultural burning is something that is just horrible.

Hmm. Um, but then because of the awareness, Because they have the bad air, they've had it for longer, they got more aware. So I started to visit these places to see, um, and I could see the trend. I'm like, air is getting worse here too. We think our air, you think just because the air quality is good where you live, it's going to be good forever.

It's getting worse. Um, so I was like, let me go see where air is bad. And then I. Spent about a year finding every [00:49:00] factory I could that made really large air purifiers. Much larger than what you might see in a store here, and then I tested them all. So I was just like very first principles, man. I used an air table spreadsheet, and I was like, okay, I already knew, because I knew from my restoration and air quality consulting, I knew how to test air.

So super first principles. I would go in a room, I'd pollute the air, I'd run the air purifier, and I'd see how much cleaner can I make the air in 30 minutes and 60 minutes. And run them on high speed for weeks or months. You know? After a week, two of them aren't on anymore. Well, those ones aren't very good.

These ones are plastic. These ones, like, so, just process of elimination, I wanted to find the best factory in the world that makes really, really good air purifiers. And then I wanted to innovate with them. Because most of these big effective machines were very ugly. So, by having, like, ruthlessly clear Criteria and requirements of what you want to build the engineering stuff's not that hard because there's [00:50:00] engineers, right?

So like the new Jasper that will come out next year is gonna be three inches shorter with the same filter I literally just I started taking apart Jaspers recently and I was like, hey There's a gap here and there's a gap here and there's a gap here We have wasted space inside the machine. Can we not get the machine to be smaller?

And then, you know, the engineers look at their models and stuff, and they're like, actually, yeah, we can. Good question. Um, so by being, I'm just, I consider myself like a ruthless consumer. So by knowing what I want, I can then question the engineers. And then, it's just a lot of asking why not. And then they give you an answer, and you're like, but why?

And then eventually they go, actually, maybe we can do this. So if you're like, you're really clear on what you want, and then yeah, because of that restoration background, I kinda was, I was qualified in terms of air quality. And restoration, um, so then the making of the purifiers was actually fairly straightforward.

Have you found that there's needed to be a big education curve to the [00:51:00] consumer with the product that you guys have? Big. Really? Big. What, uh, what resonates the most with consumers? Is it stuff we've already talked about? Sleep! Sleep and allergies. So, um, it's, so you've been here how long? Three years.

Almost three years. Yeah, me too. When did I land? I bought my house January 2022 and we got here You guys got a house like eight days later or something like that? Yes, and then we moved here in August. I mean Austin's pretty good, but people talk about allergies here all the time. It's actually a thing.

Yeah. Yeah, what's it? Um, the Cedar fever Cedar fever. Yeah, people talk about it. Yeah, like that's not a thing everywhere. Yeah, it's a thing here people suffer tremendously from seasonal allergies and The coolest thing ever is when somebody puts a Jasper in their bedroom, and then they have no more seasonal allergies Hmm, I never saw that coming in a million years I was making an air purifier for wildfire smoke You I never thought we'd be in the health and wellness and sleep and biohacking space in a million years and When so Eric if let's say in your bedroom you have [00:52:00] about probably this room, too Actually, maybe worse here if we measure the air quality, there's probably about eight hundred thousand particles floating in the air between 0.

1 and 10 microns in size So whether that's insect parts dust hair follicles pollution pet dander mold pollen You smoke, cooking stuff, all this stuff. 800, 000. We put the Jasper in there for half an hour, an hour, typically that number is reduced by 95%. Very quickly. So, if you are sleeping in this very polluted environment, so you go outside, you come inside, you're under attack 24 hours a day by the allergens.

We're very resilient, but we need a break. So, when someone's really beat down by seasonologies, now all of a sudden, they have, they come, you know, we spend 95 percent of our time indoors in the western part of the world. So, this is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that's way too much time inside. The blessing is this is the one environment you can control.

So if you dial in your air quality at home, now all of a sudden you're [00:53:00] breathing basically no pollen. For 95 percent of the time. So now when you go outside, Psht, it's nothing. You're, um, you're Ben Azadi gave me this really nice Analogy where he's like, your, your, your stress toxin load is like a cup, and if it fills to the, you know, If your cup is filled with water, and you pour more water in it, it overflows, or if you shake it, it overflows.

But it's, it's very sensitive. If the cup is only 20 percent full, it can take more water, it can take a shake, It's not gonna overflow. I like this analogy. I like that. Because when you are breathing clean air 95 percent of the time, indoors, Your toxin load is coming down dramatically and now when you go outside a little mold a little pollen I would have thought you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Mm hmm. We learned that but there's exceptions to that rule

And when you are able to be in that super super clean air environment During [00:54:00] 95 percent of the time. Yeah, your tolerance to outside is so much better. You can handle it. Not a problem. Sleep. I've seen people's aura scores go from a 60 to a 90. Like somebody's been tracking their sleep for years. It's just like bad HRV, bad sleep quality.

They pop an air purifier in their bedroom, and it instantly fixes them because they were breathing mold and pets and dander and, and dust mites all night long. VOCs and now they weren't so it's not like the air purifier is this magical silver bullet It's that all the things you were breathing that now you're not breathing.

Short 5 - sleeping
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We're really holding you down so when you can dial in I call air sleep fuel because it's the you know, we need our bodies need food water and air to survive and when we're Sleeping we don't have food or water literally. The only thing keeping us alive is air all night long. So it's just like you could imagine if you were drinking, think about the health impact [00:55:00] from drinking pond water from the side of the road that you just found, which is basically outdoor air or super filtered air.

If you just took a shot of it once, you may not notice a difference immediately, but like you might get sick, but chronically over time drinking filtered water. So, you know, your inflammation goes down, your autoimmune stuff goes down, your recovery goes up. So the exact same things happen when you have filtered air.

It's very, very similar to filtered water. So you guys launched during COVID. What have been some of the big learning lessons that you've had as a founder since launching in 2020? So, fun fact, our price back then was 19. 75. Dang. There were two grand. And you guys are down to 9. 99. That's amazing. We went to 13.

99 last year, 9. 99 this year. It's gonna be hard to get it lower than this. Yeah. Um, but We were two grand because our cost just on shipping was about five hundred dollars each Wow Prices were crazy during [00:56:00] kovat and for the first year freight prices freight. Yeah, our Our first thousand customers were basically all doctors and dentists So we essentially only sold into the medical space during COVID.

These are the people who really needed it to get back to business. And I was in Canada at the time, and in Ontario, they mandated every single dentist needs an air purifier in every room to get back to business. That was our launch week. So we had a very explosive launch week. And then we had to scramble to get inventory and all that.

But for the, dude, we only, so we launched May 23rd, 2020. And we only turned e commerce on February 2023. So for the first three years of the business, we had no e commerce. If you wanted to buy a Jasper, you would go to our website, you would request a consultation. Wow. And then we would talk to people about their mold, about their, their COVID protocols, whatever it was, but it was a consultative, one to one sales approach.

And were [00:57:00] you taking those sales calls? I was. Probably 60 percent of them. Wow. Um, I had a small team, but like, A lot of them were, were, were me. So we went from, and then the cool transitioning point happened was the dental hygienists would rave about Jaspers. In fact, when the Jasper would go down, because man, dentists have the worst air.

So the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor, um, ranked dentists has, and hygienists, has two of the top five most dangerous jobs in America. More than like coal workers, miners, cops, firefighters. Why is that? Because the air quality. It's that bad? It's that bad. Think about this. The dirtiest part of a human is your butt and your mouth.

And these dentists are blasting high velocity water and air into your gum lines. So if, the air quality during a dental procedure is off the charts. Really? And the dentists and the hygienists have like, A little N95 mask. The patient has nothing. Your mouth's wide open there. Just breathing [00:58:00] that last person's stuff.

And even in, it's not just in that room. Even in the lobby area. It's crazy how bad air quality is. All the bio aerosols. Wow. And then the, the, because the way Jasper's designed where it automatically detects pollutants in the air and kicks up. The hygienists would see it going up. Every time so they got more error where so they started they refused to work at the office unless the Jasper was in their operatory So someone's the dentist would buy like four then they'd have to buy more and if one had an issue They would call us panicking to send them another one because the staff would refuse to work Well, and then they would rave about it to patients and say hey, you know, we have this super clean air filtration system This is perfect Why are dental offices the best and then that patient might be like hey my kid has asthma my kid has allergies Do they sell these for the home?

So then the parents would reach out and we'd give them like a 40 percent off discount. I'm like We'd give them huge deals because also we were experimenting with lower prices during COVID and we couldn't sell any. [00:59:00] Dentists were used to a medical price. So when we tried to give them a good deal, they didn't trust the quality of the product.

Now it's different, you know, we have many thousands of customers and testimonials and all that. So now price is a feature, but back then a low price was actually a bug. It hurt us. And so then the, the patients started to become the customers and I'm like so if you read a testimonial from a dentist It's like Jasper's great.

My patients and staff feel so safe. It was like more of an optics play for them Wow, but then I would start reading the reviews and testimonials from the family It's like my kids not having asthma attacks anymore. My kids sleeping through the night. My dog even seems great I'm like, oh, this is way better.

So originally I designed Jasper for wildfire smoke Because we launched during COVID, it was a dental medical thing, and now, uh, it's completely consumer like 99 percent is families, homeowners, cooking, sleep, allergies, and um, [01:00:00] the reason that we bring the price down, and I will always continue to make things as cheap as I can is I actually, I, I'm, I'm a big deflation advocate, so I honestly think we are going to see, you know, inflation's been crazy.

I'm betting that we are going to start to see deflation like crazy over the next 5 10 years. Because technology is inherently deflationary. Let's go with a food example. How crazy is it that food costs more now than 30 years ago? When 30 years ago there was 150 people on the farm, and now there's like 4 people and an AI robot tractor.

Short 6 - Deflation
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And like, why are the price of eggs up? Like, mama chicken has not raised her prices. Yeah. In fact, we've only got more efficient and effective with our agricultural techniques, yet the price of food is going up. This doesn't make sense to me. Um, so I believe that the def now with, like, I think AI will be a bit of a catalyst for it, [01:01:00] but I think we're reaching a breaking point where now prices have got so absurdly high that the best form of marketing is a good product for a good price.

Yeah. It matters. Yeah. So And our price was just way, way, way too high. It made sense for COVID, but our costs were crazy, but now our costs have come back down to normal. So the lower we can produce things and ship stuff, we just passed that. Savings on to the customer and then we sell more product the customer gets a better deal and everybody wins so I really believe that I Want to be like a really big advocate for deflation and you know, even like in supplements and stuff Yeah, like shit got so crazy and everybody raised their prices during Cove.

It's so much that you know Supplements could be 80 90 bucks a month right now. Yeah, it's like what are we paying for? So now there's a great op Let's say it costs 6 to make a pill that you can sell for 80 You Well, now someone's like, we're just [01:02:00] gonna make the same thing for 29, and destroy you, and it's gonna work.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I also, I feel like, um, You know, monetary inflation has been brutal since COVID. I feel like there's now options out there in the form of like Bitcoin, which is, I think, deflationary technology, um, which could affect prices long term. I think it will effectively bring prices down for everything, but we'll see.

If I had unlimited bandwidth, I really would love to start a place, I don't know if I'd call it this, but Reasonable priced chicken, I think is what I'd call it. Yeah. Dude, I missed the days where a pound of wings was ten bucks. It was 9. 99, and a pound, you used to get ten or twelve wings for a pound.

Somehow now you order a pound, now it's like 17. 99 for six wings. Dude, I feel like the And I love chicken wings. The biggest mark of inflation is looking at fast food prices. It's like, for a family of four to go to McDonald's, it's [01:03:00] probably at least forty bucks. Yeah, I mean, I actually had a McDonald's not long ago on, like, a road trip.

Uh, and I, I have two daughters that are two and four. I have a small wife who doesn't eat very much. I'm a moderate eater, and it was, it's, it's, for us, it's about 40 ish dollars. Wow. And, like, no McFlurries, no apple pie. Yeah. We weren't even going all out, man. Yeah. Um, Yeah, that's a good marker of it. I think home houses too.

Yeah, I like to look at the beer to house ratio So I'd like to create a beer to house ratio index So I was asking my grandfather about five years ago, so they bought their house in like 1950 Let's say in Canada. It was like 50 grand and then you know 65 years later is like 4 million on a small little bungalow, and I'm like yo how much was beer back then?

He's like, I don't know 30 cents 50 cents. I'm like how much is it now? It's like three bucks I'm like The price of beer only 6x, but the house was like, like a hundred or an [01:04:00] 80x. Yeah, so it's like what's going on here? Um, but yeah, it really shows up in food, but it made sense that everything inflated when fuel costs went up.

Yeah, but then people got really, so freight has been an interesting one, because 2, 000 To 20, 000, back down to 3, 000, now they're about 8, 000. So, because at 20, 000, half the companies just had no more business. Yeah. So then the freight companies were literally like, they had to lower their price and it was a bit of a competitive marketplace.

But like, if you just made a restaurant, with high quality, you, you think that you need Um, a couple of businesses that I, I've been binging business biographies lately. Um, like Sam Walton's book. Oh yeah, I've heard good things. Made in America. Yeah. Highly recommended. Really? Or Geico. Wow. So Geico operates, they're the biggest insurance company in the country.

And I believe like, maybe the most profitable too. I think their profit margins are like 4 or 5 percent. Wow. Their whole goal is [01:05:00] only to have 4 or 5 percent margins. But it's like, we're going to be so operationally efficient. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That if anyone else tries to touch our price they're gonna go out of business.

Costco does the same thing. Man, this is the coolest. So Costco, Costco doesn't have bags. They don't give you paper bags. Right, they just give you the boxes. This was a while back. So, the, Costco, if it was like even a few cents a bag, with 150 million checkouts, I forget the exact math, but more or less, if Costco provided those little few cent bags per person, that would be 50 million dollars a year, and this was like 10 years ago.

So it's probably a hundred million now. Yeah. So, this is kind of the thing with Jasper too. We're operationally ruthlessly efficient. So, If you want a medical grade air purifier, it's two grand. We can do it for a thousand because we don't have big fancy offices. We don't have jet planes and dinners and off sites.

We're not, we don't have, uh, we don't have season's tickets to the [01:06:00] Longhorns. Yeah, we're ruthlessly efficient. We pay our, I pay myself a minimal salary, and that is what allows us to compete on price. Um, Walmart was the same thing. Like, they would find, if, if, if, You know, it was, the matter of changing the price of deodorant or toothpaste by 50 cents was a huge difference for the consumer to buy from this store or this store.

It really made a difference. So if you can have quality and price. You don't need anything else. You don't need a crazy, you don't even need a, you don't need an Instagram account with paid ads and Facebook ads. And you know, a whole marketing team and all this flashy stuff because it's like you just spent 300 grand on marketing.

Where you could have just cut your prices in half, and been ruthlessly efficient, and give the customer an excellent product for an excellent price. And nobody, and most people just don't know how to compete like that. So I think the coolest opportunity, man, like I can't do it now. We're just not at the point like, [01:07:00] but like my ultimate dream like five years from now, if I could get Jasper's man to like 4.

99 and like 1. 29 a filter, And all made in America, like that, that is like my, that's like my, that's like my, you can't compete against that. Good luck, my competitors have hundreds of products, hundreds of staff, fancy offices, Corporate executives being paid on public companies, you know, being incentivized by quarterly profits.

They can't compete. Yeah. And I, I just love the idea of um, And I guess in fast food, like the commodity price of foods must have just gone up so much. Mm. And I guess if all of it rises equally, then they can kind of get away with it, because it's still that you're the cheapest one within that option, but Yeah, it's a, it's a thing that I really am fascinated by.

Hmm. How are you guys acquiring most of your customers today? Is it Podcasts. I love that. It's all podcasts. So it's education focused, orienting it around We don't have Google ads, we don't have Facebook [01:08:00] ads. The only thing we do do on Facebook is like the retargeting ads. So if someone comes to the website, we'll educate them a little bit more.

Hmm. Because everybody wants to make things easier. Into these 60 second soundbites, and hey, we'll probably do it with this a little bit. Yeah, we will, most likely. Ideally, the 60 second soundbite, the call to action should not be by Jasper. It should be come listen to the podcast. Totally. Because in order to be educated, you, you know, you can't just distill everything down to like a two second soundbite.

Like a little tangent here is people Always say, how many square foot does a Jasper cover? I'm like, square footage is the wrong metric. Do you have 8 foot ceilings or 16 foot ceilings? Air purifiers don't care about square foot, they care about cubic volume. Do you have a layout with 4 or 5 different rooms, or is it a big open space?

Do you have a central air HVAC system or baseboard heating? All of these things are factors. So what really matters, it's like, the best is one per bedroom and one in the kitchen. But, everybody's trying to think through Amazon filter lens. It's like, [01:09:00] Price and then like large room not everything's like you know like yeah sure with a TV We can do it.

I want the 45 to 50 inch or I want the 60. How big is my wall? How far am I sitting? What size TV do I want? You can certain things can go into boxes But like I don't I have a you know a Sierra truck. I don't even know what the horsepower is That was like 20 15 years ago. Yeah, who cares about horsepower anymore now.

I'm like Is it comfortable? Are the seeds good? Is it safe? Do I enjoy the experience of it? Way more than like, what's my torque in my 0 60? Those are metrics that actually don't matter at all. Um, so yeah, when it comes to health, and wellness, and lifestyle, and stuff, like you know, if we want to talk about this deflationary stuff, that's really important stuff.

You know, like, if I could inspire entrepreneurs to get ruthlessly efficient and compete on price, This is a this is something we're talking about now What's the the short term attention span equivalent to that like an infographic like what [01:10:00] yeah, what what are we doing here? I'm just gonna quickly scroll and like I get it now nah, so podcasts podcasts are by far number one and then email so I send very I write all of our emails at myself They're very, very educational first, very, very un salesy.

The whole thing is like, you know, there's not very many beautiful, high quality air purifiers with lifetime warranties. So I don't need to brag about Jasper. I just need to increase air awareness and air consciousness. And then as a by product of that, for some people, we have a solution for them. If not, if they can learn to crack their window or fix their range hood or take off their shoes when they go in the front door, or buy better chemicals or oils or whatever.

I think we're doing our part here. We just want to kind of increase the environmental awareness and the environmental consciousness. And so it's all podcasts. That's amazing. Yeah, and I love the podcasting medium for [01:11:00] founders. I think that there's so much power in tapping into other people's audiences, people hearing your story.

Word of mouth marketing is not dead. I think actually human to human trust when it comes to buying products is going to get more important because Genuinely, I generally think that consumers are gonna get so digitally drained from buying everything off Instagram and off tik tok and based on these like very like sales focus tactics that purchases like an air purifier.

It's like, are you going to buy that on TikTok? Are you going to buy that after hearing the founder or somebody else talking about the product for an hour or two and explaining all the different reasons why it's an important product to have in your home? Where do you guys get your customers? Most of our customers have come through the show and through So, well, where do you get the listeners?

So, we started, we actually started writing online two years ago, and that was our start into the health and wellness space. Started writing about food [01:12:00] history. Grew a Twitter following. So that's been like our biggest. Are you still doing that? Yeah. So that's basically our sales funnel is writing online and then the podcast and then.

So you. We do some, we do some paid as well. So you research some stuff, you write some good stuff, and then you post about online. Yep. And then people like what they hear. Yeah. They come and listen to you here. Yeah. It's uh, Definitely not what you'd hear in like the master class courses that are being sold online on how to market but I do think that there's trust being built up over time with the way that you know We have cool guests on talking about different things.

What product did you guys launch? It's called noble origins. It's a supplement. That's similar to what like an athletic greens did in the like greens powder space, but Just meat focused, so it's, uh, beef protein isolate, uh, organ complex, collagen, and colostrum. So some of the most nutrient dense par nutrient dense parts of the cow, all in [01:13:00] one powder.

And, uh, I've heard of hardened soil. Yep. Does it somewhat overlap in that kind of that kind of niche? A bit, yeah. Similar, um, they're more pills focused, we're more powdered focused. So how do you take it? So it'd be in a smoothie. Great. Yeah, I learned a lot about supplements a few years ago. I actually helped my wife start a supplement company.

Really? And then we closed it down immediately because it was a mushroom gummy. Mm hmm. And it was not good. Really? And it didn't taste good? No, it tasted amazing. Oh, wow. But it was, it really, it, The supplement space is so interesting and because it forces you to pretend to have a silver bullet. It forces you to be like, this will fix your sleep, your memory, your focus, like, Nothing is gonna get you, it's like nobody would want to buy something if it said this will make you 5 percent better Yeah, but if they did like 10 things that made them 5 percent better that would compound to being like twice as good.

Yeah, and We were charging way too much Uh, and we weren't, it wasn't an [01:14:00] innovative, unique product, but I got to learn, so I'm glad you used the powder, because what I learned is gummies are often just extracts. Um, the payload is so low, so I learned that gummies were like the worst, and then like tablets were a little bit better, and it was like gummy, pill, tablet, powders.

Because the powder, you can have a pretty substantial payload. If you try to put your stuff into a pill, The dosage would be far too small to do anything. It wouldn't be efficacious at all, yeah. Or you'd have to take, you know, a bunch of the pills. I think that's like a good, for me, if I was you, from an education standpoint, of like, why use a powder instead of a pill, is super important.

And like, showing, um, I would love to see an ad where you have, um, a pile of your powder, and then you pour out a competitor's pill, just emptied the pill, beside, beside, beside, beside. And then you have your powder beside. It's like, you know, we're, sometimes size matters, guys. The quantity does matter. [01:15:00] It's like, we have similar stuff.

But like, because of the form factor in a smoothie, you're gonna get like 40x of it. You would need to eat this whole bottle every day. So they're selling you convenience at the cost of effectiveness. Right. Yeah, I like that. I think that the, the supplement industry too, just in general, it's like, You know, people can, who are listening to our show, understand our food philosophy, how we think about, you know, real whole foods first, the supplement industry, it's called the supplement industry for a reason, like this is additional to what you're already doing well.

Do you guys have any, uh, plans to do any other products ever? Yeah, we, we, um, I was actually thinking about this today on the way over, uh, cause we've been talking about product innovation, so, uh, I think we're gonna do a really premium colostrum product at some point. And then I've, I've been recently thinking about potentially doing some sort of, uh, I don't know if this would be under noble or not, but like in the protein space, like a meat stick or, um, [01:16:00] like boxed beef, like ground beef with liver heart, And kidney in it potentially or liver and heart in it and doing that under the noble brand I think could be pretty interesting Would it just be being like a product?

It would be a food product So it would be a little bit of a pivot outside of the supplement space. I think it'd be a good one I think it would be good because we could kind of categorize ourselves a little bit more of like a protein company instead of Just like a supplement I, I was at this wellness event in New York City a couple months ago, and I got, I got hit with this massive awareness, because it's my friend John Beer's company, um, Jack Taylor.

So they're a health and wellness PR firm. So who was there? Whoop, and um, Eight Sleep, and those um, what are those, those sleep beds? Those um Eight Sleep or is it a No, no, no. Those um, healing sound therapy wave beds. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Opus. Opus. It's called Opus and there was um, you know all this inside tracker was there and [01:17:00] Momentous and I and it was a media event So I was just watching the media would go around and then test all these different products So like I am very unbullish on the red light therapy industry.

Hmm I've used it. It's fine. It's hard to compete you I would watch the media Go and use red light therapy, and then I'd listen to the talk and like it's, it's supposed to do A, B, C, D. But then I would watch them go and So I'm bullish on products where as soon as you consume them, you can see and feel the difference and explain it easily.

So you know, there was like, these little lights, this like, it was like red light therapy for your knee. But then you hear people talking about it, they're like, Here's the benefits that guy said it has yeah, not sure then you watch someone go in the cold plunge, and they're like whoo Whoo, they're feeling it like sauna.

Yeah, you feel it totally cold plunge. You feel it. Eight sleep. [01:18:00] You feel it so when somebody can I don't care if it's McDonald's or chocolate. You can have the experience and have immediate feedback if you liked it or not. So that's why I love when someone can sleep with a Jasper in the room. Like, whoa.

It's that different. Oh, yeah. Really? Generally in the living room, it's gonna be pretty profound with cooking, but the bedroom for sleep is very profound. Wow. Especially I was gonna ask you, I was gonna say, would you think Jasper's Closer to the red light because it's like if you put in like a big warehouse Then yeah, because yeah, it's like trying to heat the bathtub with the kettle.

It's right. It's too small If somebody has four or five in their house when people when guests come over, it's like whoa It just feels easier to breathe here. It's it's quite Apparent, but in the bedroom on fan speed two or three My favorite test used to be give people the Jasper for a week then take it out And then they have a panic attack, so there's one downside to having a Jasper you become an air snob You [01:19:00] basically like always need it you always need it because it's like once you discover filter like you know you grow up There's just water it was tap water when I don't know when this filtered water thing got so popular But I'm a big fan of it, but like I would just get tap water everywhere I'd go.

It was fine. And then you think back and you're like, actually, come to think about it, when I was a kid drinking from the hose, it did taste kind of plasticky. Hmm. And then now, once you start drinking filtered water, you can taste the tap water. You can taste the chemicals. You can taste, it tastes horrible.

Um, so when you start breathing super filtered air, You become a bit of an air snob. You know, I come in here like, your CO2 is high. Um, not horribly high, but it's high. It's, it's, it's, you know, we're in the yellow. We're not in the green. Where are we at right now? We're just hovering around a thousand, a bit over.

Okay. Like, you want that thing in the green. It's the worst I've seen it. So, yeah, basically like, that's where, um, in a bedroom, air quality is definitely in the, um, it also depends on the person. If that person lives in like, Costa [01:20:00] Rica or Vancouver Island or the mountains, and their air quality is good, then it's gonna be less noticeable than someone who lives in Austin, Florida, Los Angeles, has wildfire smoke, mold, allergens, um, pollen, things like that.

For those folks, especially in their bedroom, it, it's less red light, more cold plunge. Um, and then supplements are so tough. Yeah. Because you, it's, when you're buying a supplement, you're, ideally, what you're doing makes sense, because you're actually just selling the trust that the listener has in you.

Like, they're trusting that, that you created a product that you believe in. Yeah. And you can explain that to them over a period of time. Makes sense. But when you're just like competing at a shelf, out of CVS or a Whole Foods or something, and like, you take this pill and like, I don't know, and usually when someone's on their health journey, they're doing lots of stuff at once.

Yeah. So it's really hard to attribute, like, what was the sleep? What was the working out? What was the diet? What was the supplement? I don't know. You throw the kitchen sink at it, and then you like, Like, [01:21:00] do you care? Are you just going to keep doing it all? Uh, but when you move to like a food product, like, what Chomps did, or Honest, Honest Man, Jessica Alba's thing, with like the kid's juice boxes.

Oh yeah, so good. Just like, how about juice with way less sugar? Yeah. Put the word honest in it. Yeah. Kid is happy, less sugar. You win. Yeah, or like chomps and now there's what paleo valley and these other companies as well Yeah, it's like I could give my kid a crappy snack or like a piece of meat Yeah, but it's because it's packaged and like a nice cute fun to open thing The kid cares more about the unboxing and the packaging experience than anything Yeah, like they really care if it feels like a new toy every time they open the snack Like, I could literally put in, like, a teaspoon of AG1 powder, and my one of my daughters doesn't like to drink water.

It's boring. But if I put in, like, a fraction of AG1, just enough to slightly turn it green, now it's called green drink or green juice, and she'll smash it. And it's fun. We [01:22:00] gamified it. So I think what's cool in the in the food space, you You get to tap into someone's, like, their hunger. You know, supplements don't satisfy hunger, food does.

Um, they can munch it, they can smash it. So if you can give them, like, a high quality product that they can taste. So I think supplements is generally more red light. And, and if, in a high quality, like a, like a beef jerky that has a bunch of great stuff in it, or doesn't have a bunch of bad stuff in it, that's also good portion, good consistency, good taste.

Like those truff hot sauce guys, man. Yeah. Yeah. They made an expensive, bougie, awesome hot sauce and I'm all about it. People buy the 50 one to gift it. Dude, those things are That's an incredible business. So yeah, if I just like, once I kind of added that frame, I can't unsee it. Yeah. So I'm like, in the future, if I'm ever launching a product or a new business, I want it to be the kind of thing where I can give someone a sample and they feel the benefits immediately.

Totally. You know, like if you, if someone's buying like Turkey Tail, Reishi, Chaga, [01:23:00] Lion's Man, they're like, Hmm, might not feel it. But if they microdose some psilocybin, it's a, it's a knowing. Yeah, there's no debate if that product is felt or not so anytime you can like tap into to a one of our senses Yeah, and satisfy it and give them an experience.

I just think you have like an unfair advantage Yeah And you've seen a lot of these ice barrel companies or sonic companies just absolutely blow up the last three years We've had a few of them on our podcast and do you do cold? Yeah, I love it. I try to do it Like, a few times a week. Do they have it here?

Yeah, they have it here. Hmm. And then, uh, try to sign it like, two, three times a week. Both just Undeniably affect your day. It's a natural high. Yeah, totally. So cold plunge is coffee without the coffee. Yeah Yeah, you're in your mood is altered for the rest of the day. And here I find let's say it's like we've had a pretty Reasonably tempered summer.

It's been way less hot than last year. Totally. I think we had our first hundred degree day yesterday I think it was yeah It's just starting to get hot like it [01:24:00] wasn't it hasn't been that bad last year. June was hotter than it is now totally and It's like a free sauna outside here. Yeah, dude but like I found when I do cold I'm not bothered by the heat for like six hours.

It like internally chills me. Yeah, and I actually find that I used to be like Three or four minutes at like 37 degrees. I was going for like warrior mode as cold as possible Yeah, but I find now with the heat here like 55 degrees for like nine or ten minutes I think that's the play. I think it might be.

I think like 50 degrees is the perfect ice bath. For longer. Yeah, do it for longer. Like, you know, longer than five minutes. But I just feel way better after getting out of a 50 degree cold plunge than the third, like the one here is 33 degrees. I'm like, dude, this is, I don't know. I just like shocked myself.

I mean it feel, it definitely, you feel, it gives you the feels. Yeah. So one thing that I read about you, so [01:25:00] You're obsessed with Notion, which I love, um, and on your Notion page, I saw on this timeline that you sold 30, 000 worth of Lacoste t shirts when you were in high school, 15 years old. Have you always been this entrepreneurial minded person?

Yeah, it was um, I don't know if it was nature or nurture, but I literally like, it comes with shedding some limited beliefs and some Problems that came with it too. But mostly it was a good, a great thing. But I was basically, dude, I made about 300 K when I was 23. Wow. Um, after remediating a flood. So I went from like 10 K to like 300 K in like three months.

Wow. And I still lived at home. I was in my twenties though. I traveled tons. I went to like 50 countries. I was traveling a lot. Hmm. Even. I literally couldn't compute a mortgage or rent. I thought, you save enough money to buy a house for [01:26:00] cash, and then that's when you can move out. Um, so at 26, I, with the fires, it was a pretty successful time, and then I moved out.

But, I literally was just told debt and mortgage is the devil, and so was getting a job, so I only knew entrepreneurial stuff. I grew up in like a medium, you know, um, what's the word? Middle class. Middle class. Middle class, you know, we, um, And, uh, you know, we had all the stuff. It was fine. Um, but it wasn't like, uh, unlimited money by any stretch.

I wasn't given stuff. I wanted stuff. I usually had to figure a way to get the money. Um, But I was very much introduced to business being kind of a game at a young age. So, when I saw all these preppy kids at school buying these 100 shirts, and then I discovered Alibaba and I found I could get them for 13.

Um, so I bought like 50 of them, and then sold them for 40, and then I bought another 50, and then 500. Um, [01:27:00] and then I would sell them to the older kids, the cool kids, and They would sell it to the less cool kids, or they'd sell it to their parents. So I first I was selling buying them for like 15 selling them for 40 or 50 And then I started selling them by the 10 or 20 pack for 30 and those kids were selling them for more and then So it was like your entire high school just wearing lacrosse t shirts.

No, that was a bit I actually my hustle after that was glass bongs. Hmm I designed a bong. I lived in Canada. Kids smoke bongs a lot. And I, I, I designed a bong with a company in India. Um, Mr. Akash, we would talk on Skype and he would give, send me the bongs, which was called glass art. And then I would take them to the head shops and I would say, here, here's a box of bongs.

I'll give them to you for a hundred dollars each. They're on consignment. I'll come back next month. Give me either, give me, here's 20 bongs, I either want 20 bongs back, or two grand, or some combination of the two. Um, and then I would sell them on consignment. [01:28:00] Um, different, different, like whenever there was like a luxury clothing phase, like there was these things called Bape hoodies at one point in time.

It's like a 200 hoodie, I can get them for 40 bucks. And then I got into cell phone repair. Um, iPhones, and uh, Blackberries, pre Android. And um, so I was just always into being like, When I'd see a price for something, my brain naturally would see everything in, like, time and materials. So if it's like, wait, you know, if, uh, it cost a hundred grand to build a pool, Instantly my brain saying, how much labor and how much materials.

And if it's 80 grand, I'm like, okay fine, maybe it makes sense to hire a pool company. But if it was 15k, then my natural instinct would be, let's start a pool company. So, man, I owned Rapid Electric, we did generators in my 20s, I did generators, I did roofing, I did uh, HVAC, I did cleaning, I did um, a little bit of pool stuff.

I basically, whenever I would see like a high priced service, I also, I created [01:29:00] a trigger for myself. Whenever there's a waiting list for something, it was a trigger to me to start that company. So like after the, there was an ice storm in Toronto, half a million people lost power for two weeks. So it was a six month waiting list to get it to get a generator installed.

But you could buy a generator in three weeks. There was just no one to install it. And when there was peak demand, prices go up. So I was basically just always in the peak demand business. Floods, flood business is a horrible business to be in. On just, like, if you're like a local flood company, it stinks. I only, when I did flood fires and hurricanes and stuff, I would only go to traumatic situations.

So, Hurricane Harvey in Houston, wildfires in California, British Columbia, like, for about some period of weeks or months after a natural disaster, prices like 5x, and then they go back to baseline. So, the margin of advantage happens, like, man, last year when everybody got stuck at Burning Man, My first thought was, let's do helicopter evacuations.

Yeah. I'm like, let's go [01:30:00] do helicopter evacuations. There's a shitload of rich guys. They got places to be, they would certainly pay 15 20 grand to be stuck out of this desert storm with limited water. I'm like, nope, I can't keep doing this anymore. But in my 20s, like, I know some kids here that made almost 10k last year when we had the storm and all the trees came down.

They're making 10k a day for a week. Just just doing branch clearing. Wow, but like if you were really good, you'd be like, okay Let's get 50 trucks and a hundred guys and make a million, you know Probably a hundred million got spent on brush cleanup that month So for that month if you were in the brush cleaning business, there was unlimited business, right?

So in my 20s, it was basically like a brush cleaning situation be like let's go hit it Make a ton of money, do good work, and then I would go travel for six months until the next moment would happen. Mmm, um, but yeah, it was definitely rooted from childhood and my dad and sisters and lawyers They were all like accountants and doctors and stuff.

Mmm. I definitely knew I didn't want to trade time for money Mmm, that was not the life for me. Gotcha. Coolest [01:31:00] thing about a product business like while you're sitting here if if there was 500 orders placed You'll be chilling still. Yeah, you mean you could get into a cash flow situation But pretty much when you sell a product as long as you can consistently make a high quality product and have good support It scales beautifully or it's like when you do construction if you sell ten jobs, you got to do ten jobs.

Yeah So yeah, yeah, totally definitely time for money is that's something I realized early on too and honestly fell into the trap for a little bit But good Austin. Yeah, totally. Austin's the best place to be to see I just think the world of entrepreneurship here is so rich and just so many opportunities to tap into Ecom or you know, there's a lot of cool innovative companies in the health and wellness space.

So just tons of opportunity You mentioned travel Have you seen that bear fruit in the way that you operate your businesses or think about entrepreneurship? Oh, yeah, well just like even being exposed to bad air quality mm hmm remember being in Japan and seeing pizza cones [01:32:00] Mmm, I'm like why has no one just brought the pizza cone here.

Oh, what's a pizza cone? It's called like pizza cone o. Really? It was like an ice cream cone looking thing, but pizza Really like that's like if you're in a stadium or something. I've never seen that. Yeah, so you have like a pizza cone. Pizza cone. It was great It was super cool. It's what it sounds like yeah It made sense and then like they had these other concepts in Japan Where you would like be like a vending machine outside the restaurant So you'd like order on the vending machine you get a ticket, then you go inside and you And it's like, it's a small restaurant, but it's like, the kitchen's in the middle of the restaurant, and you all just like sit around it.

But I'm like, no, no, no tables, no servers. Just like, a couple people cooking and wiping the counters. So, you know, speaking of operational efficiency, they removed all the fluff. They would have like 12 to 15 food items that they would cook really good. Some combination of like rice noodle sauce, uh, soup.

And, uh, Yeah, because they removed all the bullshit, the maitre d's, the servers, the everything, they could have like incredibly [01:33:00] priced food that they would make super fast. So yeah, as you travel around, you get exposed to um, different things, you could then, I mean, if you could bring them back to America, the biggest market ever, it's like you go far and wide, see a cool concept that doesn't exist here.

Man, I, I just got, also, sometimes it works the inverse. Um, Americans who then discovered Asia would bring American things to Asia. Like, I can't remember specifically, don't quote me here, but I'm pretty sure, like, bus ads only went to Asia, like, Malaysia, like, ten years ago. Really? Someone's like, what if we put ads on buses?

Dominated. Just wasn't, I actually want to start doing, uh, ads on the pontoon boats here in Austin. Oh. On all the boat rental companies. Dude. I saw, uh, one company do it. But I'm like, why aren't they doing it on all the boats? Yeah. This seems like, they bought money or the ones on the water. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the travel was big and just like, um, it was crazy.

So I started traveling in 2009. I'm 34 now. I was 19 then. And the difference between [01:34:00] traveling in 2009 and 2013 was a world of difference. 2009, there was no, um, data plans yet. So, The only thing was internet cafes and the hostels had some Wi Fi so to navigate Europe We had paper maps and we'd have to there was no like Google Maps and Yelp and any of that stuff So like we were just like wander down the street and like find a place to eat You would it was inconceivable to like Google The best place to eat as if that would know that's just like what some guy who's good at SEO said, right?

So bringing that back here. I really enjoy that like when I travel now if I'm staying at like a hotel It's like where should we eat? Usually everyone's like on their phone I'm like, let's just walk in a straight line and like wait till something smells good. Yeah, and then get that that's smart So traveling especially at that time that I did Yeah, and then just the confidence to meet people and adapt so like I'm very comfortable.

I could talk blue collar. I could talk to white collar bankers or investors. I can [01:35:00] also speak to a bunch of Aussies partying at a hostel. So it made me kind of like a chameleon to be able to adapt. I like to speak to the people I'm speaking to in the way that they're used to being spoken to. Um, I drove Uber for a bit.

Um, after a successful business time because I'm like, I just wanted to see what it would like feel like. To be treated like an uber driver gets treated wasn't great. Yeah, it wasn't great actually And I was doing it in a Yukon Denali, but uber x okay, so I could have done You're doing black you're doing the cheap small car, but in the Yukon XL huh so people were like Mind blown.

Oh shit, did I actually order uber black? I'm like, oh, yeah, you did and then ha ha just kidding but like I'll never forget I literally had had a really successful year and Talking to the passenger in the uber and then they're all drunk and driving around the person's in the back like don't talk to him He's just an uber driver.

Short 7 - uber driver
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I'm like damn like that's horrible. That's cold Yeah, but I mean. It's terrible. It was, I, I, I don't want to be [01:36:00] blind. Yeah. To the way, I heard about this founder yesterday, the guy who started meetup. com. Mm hmm. He like, got a job at McDonald's and like at Amazon in the warehouse, even though he was worth like tens of millions of dollars.

Right. Just to like, after he has like, he like, his cycle is like, start a company, have a multi million dollar exit. Get a cert, get a, get a low paying job. I like that. Re humble, re integrate. Yeah, I think as a founder you kind of like idolize the either like end point, or maybe not the end point, but you're doing it to probably make an impact or make some money and when you do make that money, It could be life changing so just wanting to like stay humble and make sure that you're not losing like losing touch of reality It could take some work.

Yeah for sure just being mindful of that. Yeah, so just like being I've seen some friends even here in Austin They made a bunch of money and then the beginning of their travel journey is like Five star hotels. I'm like, guys, trust me. Don't do that. Do the hostels. Yeah, hostels. Go camping. Go to [01:37:00] hostels.

Yeah, I'm 34 now. I feel like my hostel window is like just recently closed a few years ago, but it's sad. Once you have kids, you're done hosteling. Yeah, you can't hostel. No, it's done. But like, but it'll open back up later in life when your kids are going through their hostel phase. Yeah, who knows what that will look like.

Anything else? Yeah, one thing I wanted to ask you about was just the, you, Leaving your phone for three years. Ah, sure, that's a good one. How was that? So that was 2017 to 2020. No phone life for three years. Mm. It was prompted by, um, a few things. Number one, I was texting and driving. Mm. And, I'm not, if you put cookies in my house, man, I'm gonna eat the cookies.

Mm. I don't smoke cigarettes, but I bet you if you put a smack pack of cigarettes in my house. I might smoke one I don't know. I've never been good at controlling the willpower by like not eating the cookies But what I'm expert at doing is not buying the cookies. Not buying the smokes not You know not having the phone [01:38:00] so it's like you know being an abstainer and not a moderator.

Yeah, exactly so I couldn't um Not use the phone when I drove, but I could not have a phone. Um, if I like put it in the trunk or in like the thing I would grab it. But like I could just not put the phone in the car like and honestly It's kind of the way I live my life now because if i'm ever in an improductive or an unhappy state Before trying to figure it out.

I always say how can I modify my environment? To be more conducive to success. So whether that means not having a phone or not having cookies Um or not buying the bread That's how I can modify my environment, or you know, optimizing my bedroom with an air purifier and, um, blackout shades and good lighting.

I could do that. I'm good at that. Um, so the texting and driving, also my memory was very clearly getting worse. So man, I was putting it in, I'd be like, Hey Siri, remind me in three hours to cook dinner. Remind me tomorrow morning to go to the gym. If you need Siri to [01:39:00] remind you to work out in the morning, Uh, you're missing the point.

Yeah. And you probably are going to not listen to her. Yeah. Like, you have a memory. It's amazing. Um, so I'm, I was also, I was using my head, my, my internal compass was getting worse. So I was, I was living in Toronto at the time. I would literally GPS everywhere I would go, driving and walking. Honestly, I'm falling victim to it a little bit here.

Right. Where I just like, get in the car and like, throw in the ways. Right. I met someone who's lived in Austin for almost ten years. And they're like, I don't know where I am ever. Really? I don't even, I've never even looked at the city on a map. That's so wild. I just, no ways. I mean, for traffic, like, it kinda makes sense to take a peek, see the traffic, and then go.

Um, so yeah, I was like, using it for like, walking around to like, a Starbucks downtown. And then I remember hanging out with my grandparents, and I'm looking at sports scores every two seconds. I mean, I was betting, but I was, I was also, I could gamble anywhere, anytime, and Canada betting was always legal, and I could like, look at sports scores every two seconds.

I don't see an app for that. And, she's [01:40:00] not, she's not supposed to listen to me. When you say. She's not supposed to do that. I don't trust that, I don't trust her. Um, So, I drank too much one time, I was, you know, younger, and I lost my phone, and my, I lost my phone. And I'm like. I'm just not going to replace this for a few days, and it felt amazing and I'm like you know what the next time I lose Or break my phone.

I'm just gonna not replace it Hmm, and it's funny because then a cab driver came to my house a week later with my phone I'm like shit I just freed myself, but then sure enough I like broke my phone or lost it again a few months later And then that just was the the three year journey It's like eventually this phone you have is gonna break so imagine you said like this is my last phone for the decade So instead of like I'm gonna get rid of my phone, but like this is all I got I got to take care of this thing once it breaks, or I lose it like I'm phoneless until 2030 so it's kind of like that mindset, but it was 2020 so I lost the phone had no phone Wow, so I didn't have any kids yet Hey, I got married in that [01:41:00] window of time so there was some hard things to overcome like uh You know, nobody could reach me when I was out and about.

But at my house, in my office, I had a computer, I had an iPad. So, I found myself, I'm like, I never, like, how often do you even call someone now? You usually use FaceTime, or Facebook Messenger call, or whatever, Slack. Like, how often do you actually, like, call a person? It's pretty rare. Like, you don't need phone numbers anymore.

So I was like, why don't I just do the iPad, or do the computer. And then, I did that. And I, um, I don't know. So my memory was quickly getting better. I was memorizing everybody's phone number. It all like came everyone's phone numbers came back to me. My head GPS was getting really calibrated again. So the bad side was, let's say for Rachel, my wife.

She couldn't reach me. But the good side was, if you're with me, I'm 100 percent present. Yeah. So if I said to you, I'm like, Yo, I'm gonna meet you at this place and this time. By the way, there's no, no pivots. I'll be there, and I'll wait 20 minutes in case you're late, and then I'm out. And I'd carry a little tiny [01:42:00] journal with me.

So if I would, if you would tell me something, My favorite part about No Phone Man, Was not having the ability to Google stuff. It's so quick now that you have a desire for information. So you just punch it in your phone and you just trust that the top thing Google serves you is the truth. Right. Instead of like, pondering it.

It's like, hey, when was this thing invented? You're like, when do you think it was invented? Like, you just like, would outsource your, your, your wonder, your curiosity and your thinking to just cheat and get the answer right away or what you think might be the answer. Right. Um, and I, it's like when you go camping, like, you have such awesome conversations because you're like.

You'd, you'd take away the Google. So, uh, Yeah, relationships got way better because I was fully present and after the first year and a half or two years I got an iPad with a data plan. I think that was the sweet spot. Really? I actually got another one again a few weeks ago. I might be I might be transitioning back to phone free again I like that because iPads great.

So I have an iPad in my bag. Yeah, it's not pocket convenient. It's not walk convenient Yeah, it's not run convenient, but you can keep it in [01:43:00] your car I can pull over I can do a FaceTime call if I need to right so it's like You It's, it's the in the pocket thing that's just too much. The convenience level is so high.

So I find iPad with a data plan is like the perfect size phone. Um, and originally when phones came out, they would like plug into your car. They were super big and now they're like tiny and they have great battery and like cameras and everything. Yeah, so I really enjoyed, um, not having it. And then when my daughter was born in 2020, I got it back.

I'm like, what if, scared dad, I'm like, what if I have to call 911 and I'm with Aria and I don't have it? So I got a truck with OnStar instead. Okay, alright. I'm like, if I have OnStar Yeah, you're good. We're good. Yeah. I just push the red button. They're supposed to know when I crash. And now, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I've been slipping down a, I had no phone for two months before Black Friday last year, and then Black Friday pulled me back in.

Yeah. Um, but I am entering a period, probably in January, where I'm going to go quite a long period of time with no phone. Hmm. Honestly. [01:44:00] It's like kind of like going back to the engineering requirements thing. You don't miss it. Until you've tried eliminating something, you don't know how essential it is or isn't.

And, Like, It was profound. My memory got better, my presence got better, so, I very much, I'm okay to live in a busy life and have a computer at home, but when I go for a walk, or I'm meeting someone, I I don't really want to be tethered. Do you feel like a different This is like kind of a weird question, but like a different person?

With and without the phone? I felt more, um, myself. And then I started to become a little bit judgmental of other people with phones which wasn't a good thing because, you know just because I wanted to have no phone doesn't mean everybody has to. So let's say we'd be like we'd meet for lunch, and you're like checking your phone a few times.

I would, I would I didn't realize it until later. I would just first feel like annoyed, and then I realized it's actually kind of interesting. Let's say I go for a walk with someone. I'm like, [01:45:00] hey, I'm gonna leave my phone, and they bring their phone, and then they check it a couple times. Even if they just would have it in their pocket on, I didn't realize it was actually like making me feel bad.

And then I think I was feeling, the sense of feeling I was getting that, that I was not enough. Because, Just being with me on a walk wasn't satisfying them. They needed to also be connected to everyone they've ever met. Right. I was, I was not checking their box of, of connection or companion on that walk.

And they needed to be connected to everybody on a moment's notice. So, But you know, you never, I just got more humble with it. I'm like, yo, I don't know if this person's literally kid is in the hospital right now. Yeah. A lot of people have a lot of stuff going on you don't know about. Yeah. So I just kind of like took, brought that kind of gratitude into it of like, Hey, you know, maybe grandma's in the hospital, maybe their sister's about to have a baby.

So I would just kind of like hold that being like, you know, I'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they really need this phone right now instead of like, cause I wouldn't call [01:46:00] people out cause that wasn't really helpful. Um, But yeah, you feel a lot different. And then usually, let's say you want to work.

I was more productive in a couple hours a day. And even now, man, I use Notion a lot less than I used to. I don't have a project management system. I don't have a to do system. I have nothing. I only have sticky notes. So in that bag, I have four colors of sticky notes. Purple is for in person tasks. Yellow is for virtual tasks.

Red is for like physical working out style tasks. So I have four different colors. Um, And, um, it matches the color code in my calendar, but I find sticky notes, dude, in the last couple of years, since I moved to sticky notes only, I've been, I literally invented products like all, all the amount of output I've gotten and productivity.

I just have a huge sticky note of my big goals and then I put smaller sticky notes underneath of the next milestones And then when I go out for the day It's like am I going to accomplish anything in the direction of [01:47:00] any of those milestones today? If yes, I just bring those sticky notes with me. That's huge.

No, like your memory is so awesome already Yeah, you don't need a to do list right? You could just wake up me like what are important projects today? Oh creating this product Let's say you want to create this product Okay, creating this product is important. What's the next step? Where are we at? You already know.

Short 8 and 9 - sticky notes and memory
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You have a crazy memory. It has an unbelievable amount of bandwidth, and I think people try to capture perfectly and take amazing notes because they're afraid of losing past thoughts. Mm hmm. Stop doing that. Your brain is a perfect machine at remembering the most important information and Intentionally forgetting the stuff that doesn't serve you anymore.

Yeah, so just like leaning into my actual memory and some sticky notes Hmm, I'm so much more productive because if you have a to do list It's very stressful because you judge yourself, and then you're mad and let's say you somehow Crossed off everything on the to do list. What would you do? You'd make a new list.

Mm hmm. So it's actually an elusive thing. [01:48:00] Yeah. To be done the to do list. There's no such thing. So just getting rid of the phone and getting rid of the to do list and then instead of When I lived in British Columbia, my commute was a 90 minute hike each way to work. Mm hmm. It was a beautiful hike through the mountains.

That's awesome. 120 flights of stairs, uh, in total, and about 27, 000 steps. Wow. But by the time I would get to my office, I would rent this little glass office downtown. But it was a hike over a mountain, all along a lake, I'd get to downtown Kelowna. By the time I got there, I would have my phone with me.

Through there, I would get realizations, and I would just send voice notes to people. And then when I get to the office, I only had 20 minutes of stuff to do, because I was so clear on the stuff that mattered most. Maybe an hour, and then I would head my walk back. So, and I'd stop at the beach, make, make my little, bring my little grill, cook my eggs, do my thing.

Um, but yeah, the um, Giving by increasing Charlie Munger said if all you ever do is Think and read all you [01:49:00] ever have to do is think and read Meaning like you'll be so wise and aware that you'll just make such few decisions and high quality decisions That won't require a bunch of busy work in between So yeah like somehow losing the phone Might want it when I did my decade review my goal by the end of this decade is to not have a computer or phone Anymore hmm.

I want to have an assistant Who lives on a secondary structure on my property or like a few minutes away and she'll have a phone and we'll just go for walk and talks together and she can be like my My conduit to the rest of the world. Well, and then other than that I'll just want to meet people in person and living in Austin.

There's enough people here Yeah, that I don't need the whole world enough cool people plenty. Yeah, and if you keep doing cool shit Like look I came to see you today on your home turf The more your pod grows, and the more your reputation grows, the farther people will travel and fly to come sit in this chair.

Yeah, and you won't have to run around and chase them anymore, so. Yeah, I love it. No phone, no to do list.

End M2
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Dude, I love it. It's so, it's so [01:50:00] contrary to what the world is moving in, but I feel like it's another way to kind of just be a little bit more human, a little bit more present, and also like, the amount of people, myself included, just struggling with all the different Just overwhelming digital to do lists and all the things that technology presents in terms of distractions.

It's so easy to just waste time. Maybe the name for my pod will actually be something closer to like addition by subtraction. I like that. I want to find a new way to say that. A way that like hasn't been said before, but when you hear it, it's like I'll think about it. Yeah. I'll think about it like the less is more, the addition by subtraction, the process of elimination, something in that vein.

Cause like, like literally Jasper has one product. Yeah. So because one color. Everyone's like, why don't you make a black one? Well, let's say I make a black one. Now somebody buys a black one, and the white one. Then they wish they had the white one. So our return rate goes up. So our efficiency goes down.

And now we gave the consumer too many choices. And now our, our, our, now we have to raise our prices. Um, now let's say we have three SKUs. I want to hire someone. I have to train them on three SKUs instead of [01:51:00] one. Instead they could be a master at one thing. So, you know, like, otherwise the customer service reps normally have to be educated on dozens of products.

So when you just make one thing. Your whole team can just be an expert at that one thing. So yeah, so I feel like never before have I been practicing the simple life this much in terms of health, wellness, food, productivity. Jasper itself and honestly Jasper's growing very quickly, so now I feel like I was Unwilling to talk about this stuff before because like unless your results are admirable.

Don't give a shit what you are saying matters Yeah, but the Though I get very excited about Has Jasper helps more people breathe better, and then the company grows and then the shit that I'm saying is Will carry much more merit, because it's like, oh, you, you built that without a phone and sticky notes?

Right. Ah. Yeah. I thought no phone would have been, like, you're a yoga teacher, like, you, you know, you did efoil, [01:52:00] efoil lessons on the lake, or paddle board lessons, like, you would have been limited to, like, a, a coffee shop style business, not a, a global technology business, with no computer, no phone. So, yeah, that's the path.

Unreal. Dude, I really appreciate you coming on the show. It's been great. How can people reach you and, uh, learn more about you? Um, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, honestly, no Instagram, no, the best place to find me is searching my name or searching Jasper on podcasts, um, different podcasts, we talk about different things, like I'd rather be known for the long form stuff, but we do have a special little offer for your audience today, did you say you know what day this podcast is coming out?

Yeah, it's going to come out next Wednesday. What day is that? August? Uh, is that the 5th? Did you confirm? You got a computer. Let's be certain.[01:53:00]

Today's the 8th. Today's the 8th. And today's Wednesday. So it's the 15th. Right. We can do this. See, we didn't need it. Or no, 14th. It's Thursday. No, 8. 15. 8 plus 7. Today's Thursday though, right? No way. Come on. I'm not that good at days of the week. It's Thursday. It's Thursday. And it's still the 8th? Yes. So it's coming out Wednesday?

So the 14th indeed. 14th. We got there. Yeah, we got it. Alright, so you're good at the day of the week, um, so that's key. Um, so basically, yeah, Jasper's normally 9. 99. If somebody, you know, so what we're gonna do is for your most loyal listeners, for the first week, so today, August 14th, until August 21st, Jasper's will be 20 percent off.

Um, and then And then forever after that, meat will always be 10 percent off. So we'll set up code Meat Mafia for your listeners. So if anybody's like, yo, that [01:54:00] makes sense. I got my clean water dialed in, I got my clean food dialed in, I want to increase the quality of my air, code Meat Mafia will be 20 percent off.

Also on Jasper's website, we already give discounts based on bundles. So people buy two, three, four, they get bigger and bigger discounts. And the discounts will stack. So literally, like, if somebody bought four Jaspers and used CodeMeetMafia, it would be 5. 99 for Jasper. Wow. Um, and then another really important thing is, Jaspers come with a lifetime warranty.

So, let's say someone's Jasper breaks. We literally ship you a new one the next day. You take the new one out of the box. You put the old one in the box. We give you a prepaid shipping label from UPS. And we schedule UPS to come to your house at 9am the next morning to pick it up off your front porch. Wow.

So, I hate being a consumer and going through hoops. Warranty, even with Amazon, man, I still gotta drive to Whole Foods or the post office. It's kind of annoying. So we, our philosophy is if Jasper ever breaks, ever, that's a Jasper problem. That's not a you problem. That's not a customer problem. So, um, and we also have something called the life changing guarantee.

So if any [01:55:00] time in the first 60 days, the person, you're not feeling, Way better, sleeping way better. We'll take it back. We'll give you back all your money. You just ship it back to us So keep the box for the first couple months, but normally within the first 72 hours people are like, holy shit I cooked it went crazy I cannot believe Me and my family were breathing air like this before and then if they put it in their bedroom on fan speed two or three And their sleep just goes through the roof.

Short - Jaspr Deal
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They're like This is the sleep hack I never knew I needed. So yeah, to summarize, today is August 14th. And the, the code is Meat Mafia. It's 20 percent off that will last for a week and then it'll be 10 percent off after that. So for anybody who was considering investing in clean air and they want something that looks beautiful and gets the job done, this is the universe speaking to you that today is the day.

Get it done. I love it. Appreciate it, Mike. My pleasure, man. Till next time. Awesome. Dude, thank you so much. That was awesome. We haven't done a deep dive on air, so, [01:56:00] or like on air quality. We started on air and then we, we went to off air. What'd we, what'd we get? 10 21? No, this was fine. Oh, 10 21. This was good.

Not too bad. That was probably like 90 minutes. I'd guess. Yeah, a little longer. Cool. A little longer is better. Yeah. We'll have a lot of content from that. I vowed to never do, also because I've, I've been cutting coffee this week for a little bit. Yeah. So like, it took me like a little while to like build steam.

Yeah. Like I could tell like, um. Like, when the pod is a little bit longer? No, no, actually, I got more energy as we went on, but on the few pods where like, I went in tired, those pods suck. Oh, okay. Like, you know, there's a place for like, speaking calm and clearly, but I think when someone's like, The reason why like Gary V works man is 'cause like he's So, you want that fucking energy.

Yeah, that energy. So what, oh geez. A lot of the time when I'm super high energy, the other person is too. And those podcasts just clearly perform a thousand better. Totally. Like everybody wants a passion unit, right? Yeah, totally. Passion kind of needs to come through a little bit. Totally. Okay. [01:57:00] Energy. Yeah.

Just the, the pod energy. Yeah. Was there good energy? Yeah, it was good. I'd say it was like a, but like a, a, a calmer good energy. Nice. It was.