Dan Clark - A Tool For Sleep And Productivity That Works In 5-Minutes

So binaural Beats is actually like pop science leftover from the 70s. So binaural beats is in the same level of subliminal messaging. Right.

Interesting.

And the guy that actually created binaural Beats later wrote a retraction on that, but it was kind of left into the psyche of everything, and it's out there. If you search YouTube, there's hundreds of millions of views on binaural Beats. There's also hundreds, millions of views on Vacuum cleaner. Sounds right. Which is a whole nother thing. But really, you know, there's a lot less data supporting that, and there's tons of white papers that we've been able to do and tests. And again, yeah, it's really about the psychological triggers that are taking effect. So now if you can have psychological triggers and the science in combination, you know, you're on a rocket. And that's, again, what we're trying to equip people with.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy.

My boy.

More Matt Wolf.

Joe. Hey, what's happening?

Not much. Just got off a really, really good call. What about you?

That's funny. I did, too.

No way.

Oh, my God.

No.

Dude, this was like. I think. I don't know, it's like kid in a candy store kind of thing. Like, just obviously the podcast itself. Just chatting with Dan off air as well. Dan Clark, I'm talking about from Brain fm. That's who we have on the show today. And. Yeah. Oh, my God. Just like, going through this.

You hear us talk a lot about Brain fm. It's because we're genuinely, like, nerding out on it.

I feel like after this conversation, they're going to hear us talk about Brain FM a lot more.

I'm pretty damn sure. So it's like, if it comes off as, like, man, they just keep talking about this. There's a reason. Yeah.

So there's a lot we go into on what that is, but just Kidney Candy Store man. That's how we're feeling right now.

Yeah.

So.

So Dan Clark, he's the. The CEO and owner of Brain fm. He's. He's not the founder. I found out by. I. I think I might have incorrectly called him the founder.

But you did. Yeah.

He is the. He is the CEO and owner of Brain fm. And what Brain FM is, is a tool where you put on your headphones and it plays music in your ears, but it can help you focus, it can help you relax, it can help you sleep, it can help you meditate. There's all sorts of different settings in there and by using this app, within five minutes you sort of get into whatever zone you're trying to get into. And I can attest to it myself, it works really, really well. And so we wanted to bring Dan on to talk about why does it work? Like, what is the actual science behind it? Is this like a pseudo science or is there like legit data behind this? And spoiler alert, there's some legit data behind this.

Oh yeah, Loads of it. So yeah, we'll dig into that like you said, Matt, and on the other side of things and this, we got into a bit of this and we'll likely have around two. Almost confident, because Dan said it as well is he is a productivity just hacker and has tried everything. He literally said he could talk about productivity hacks for three hours straight. So we dig into some of that in here as well. Some of his best habits to, for you to use right now. You know, likely locked up with your family or other people or maybe not, depending on what happens in the future. Either way, productivity hacks and great habits to, to really get yourself into and make the most of your time, you know, working, not working, sleeping, all that stuff. So this. And he's doing great thing like, you know, there's just a big vision with the company too, so. And it's already grown so much in just what, the handful of years when I first started using it. You've been using it. I mean, they keep evolving this thing and there's a lot more to come as well. So it's, it's just super fascinating. So I think that's, that's about it right there.

Yeah. So what you're going to learn on this is you're going to learn, you're going to learn about how to use these tools to get into flow, into focus or even fall asleep or, or any of that kind of stuff. And the thing that I liked about Dan too is after this call was over, we talked with Dan for probably another 45 minutes because we just continued to nerd out about this stuff, which is why we're going to do a round two. Like we probably could have had like a three hour Joe Rogan style episode with him right now because we were all nerding out about it so much. But there's a lot of amazing stuff in this episode. You're gonna love it. You're gonna get a ton out of it. You're gonna want to go get Brain fm. Brain fm. If you go to Brain fm, Hustle he actually set up a link just for our listeners to.

Free uses. And then after your five free uses, it's 20% off the normal price. So that's. What did I just say? Brain FM slash Hustle.

There you go. Brain fm Hustle. And of course, get the notes. After you sign up for Brain fm, make sure you get the notes if you don't already. If you're not already on the list or EGP member, get the free notes on this. They're free for a couple weeks. You go to hustle and flowchart.com comp hustle and flowchart.com compared to or the text number.

Mr. Matt, text the word comp to 38470 and you will also get them that way.

So 38470 is the phone number and text the word comp and. And we also have an amazing sponsor for this episode. It's hrefs a H r e f s.com our SEO traffic ninja tool. Ninja ry. I don't know. That's a new one. Cheat codes, hacks, whatever you want to call it, this is like literally the tool for you. And so go check it out. A ton of free training right now. So if you feel like you don't know what to do to get more traffic to your site, like, because we all probably want more traffic and, and we don't want to experiment a million ways, this basically will give you kind of or help you create a roadmap that you can find the gaps and figure out how to focus and get that traffic to your site. And Ahrefs has a pretty killer trial. Seven day trial for seven bones. Just $7 at ahrefs.com and it's not just SEO either.

You can use it to learn how to get traffic from YouTube, from SEO, from Google Ads. There's so many different ways to get ideas on traffic from Ahrefs other than just SEO. So go check it out. $7 7 days a h r e f s.com Bam.

All right, let's go over to Dan. Dan, welcome to the show, man.

Hey, glad to be here.

Yeah, it's interesting times, as we've been saying, with all of our other podcast guests locked up in our own individual places. And probably good that you got out of your, what, your home city of New York, Right? Are you actually in the city typically?

Usually I'm in the city, so I live right in Manhattan. And then just by consequence with my longtime long distance girlfriend, I actually just got into the suburbs. So it's, it's Been fun. Yeah.

So did you experience any of the. Any of the craziness that was going on in New York before you got out, or did you kind of get out before, before it got too maddening over there?

I got out before, so I recognized some of the stuff that was happening, and I just wanted to be better prepared. My mom has an immune compromised system, so I wanted to get out early just to be able to help. So I didn't want to take a chance.

Yeah, that's good. Well, I want to give a quick history of how this call actually came to be about. I actually made a Facebook post on. On basically, what music do people listen to to sort of get into flow for work? Right? Because what I was doing was I was using Spotify and I was just kind of trying to find music that didn't have lyrics and play that, and it was sort of okay, but some of the music was distracting, and I couldn't really find, like, a real good flow to the music. So I started asking, what are people listening to to get into flow? And on that thread, overwhelmingly, like, at least 30% of the people that responded on that thread said, you got to get Brain FM. You got to get Brain FM. You got to Get Brain FM. And then our mutual friend. Yeah, probably more, probably 50% of the people said, Get Brain FM. And then our mutual buddy Kurt Molly, who's been on the show a couple times, jumped in and said, oh, I know Dan, the founder of Brain fm. You guys have to get him on the show and chat with him. And so Kurt made the connection and here we are.

Yeah, no, I'm super happy to chat. It's really great to not only chat to people that are already familiar with what we're doing and give more context, but also, you know, spread what we're doing to people that are, you know, trying to solve their problems. Just like you were.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we've been. And don't. Don't shoot me over here for this, but because I.

I used Brain Brain FM a long time ago and then just somehow forgot about it. And then I fell into the whole, you know, I started hacking together my stuff, like binaural beat apps with Spotify layered on there, and, like, you know, it's kind of hacking it together and it's. It's good. You know, it's. Obviously, you have some really interesting tech, which I'd love to break down and, you know, have folks that kind of layman's term, like, what's actually happening. But, yeah, like, I'VE just with my hack job, I've seen my productivity increase like tremendously over the years. But I know, you know, Brain fm and especially with all of our buddies saying the same thing, it's just takes it even higher in that level.

Well, I do use Brain fm, so, you know, I got a one up over Joe. But.

But before we get into all the science and the tech and all this stuff that goes on behind the scenes of Brain fm, I want to give the audience a little bit of your story. I want to know how, like, how did Brain FM come to be? What were you doing before this? And I know that you got, you know, some funding from the National Science foundation and things like that. Like how, how did, what were you doing before this and what's the story that led to Brain fm?

Yeah, so I have a pretty interesting story. I actually am not the founder of Brain fm, so I'm one of the first users instead. So give you kind of my history. I made my first website when I was 13. I started my first, I guess, business when I was 18 and did lead to generation and really realized that I could use technology to help people. So at the time I was teaching martial arts. I'm a secondary black belt and through this simple website, I was able to double the leads coming in the door and realized that, wow, there's actually.

You know, there's value here. Made a small lead generation business. I ended up selling when I was a little older and really started going and approaching niche businesses and saying, hey, do you want to grow and explode? And I kind of go across those different verticals. I ended up being a digital advertising director for a small company outside of Boston and really hit this wall where I was optimizing for money, but I wasn't optimizing for like, you know, helping people. Right. And you know, I don't, I don't know how much depth you guys want me to go, but. But really, you know, I made this decision where, you know, I wanted to do more. I wanted to help people be their best self because that's what I was doing, you know, with kids that were coming in that were shy and not coordinated and then, you know, not confident because of that. And then using martial arts as a vehicle to empower people to be their best self. And, you know, I wanted to get back to my roots of just really using technology to do that. And it's funny, I made that decision. I quit the company. I actually had a interesting life. Like I almost died, which is a whole fun story. We can go into as a tangent, but it made me realize what's important, right? And I came across Brain fm and I remember my first session putting on my headphones and, you know, not believing it's going to work, being very skeptical, taking my headphones off and going, holy crap, this is going to change the world. And, you know, from there, I basically called up the two founders. You know, I said, hey, I'm going to work for you guys. This is what we're going to do. They didn't have the money at the time, so I ended up working for free for the first month and providing the value, ended up, you know, making a bunch of decisions. The inventor wanted me to start running the company, and then eventually I ended up becoming CEO and kind of growing it from there. So definitely interesting story for me. But if you want to. As far as how Brain Event came itself, the inventor, it actually came from, you know, those video games you can control with your mind? Have you ever thought or seen those?

Yeah, I think I've seen like a TED Talk about it or something.

Yeah, I've heard of it.

This is a thing that was trying to be done, like 18 years ago. Right. And the inventor was really. He was a developer. He was really interested in figuring this out. And he had, like, home EEG sets and to do that. And the reason why they never came into existence is because it's really inaccurate and it's really expensive. And part of the time is you had to basically calibrate these devices and wear them all the time. And he realized that whenever he was playing music that he saw these certain patterns in his brain waves and he was like, oh, wait, there's something here. And actually went into binaural beats and isochronic tones and all these things and realized they didn't have consistent results even at the time back then. And I'm sure we'll dive into the difference of what we're doing in binaural beats, but there's not a lot of evidence to support that they work again, I'll address it later. But what really started really getting interested in what can we do? And started making algorithms, started working with research institutions that are doing like, EEG scans and FMRI stuff and had another company until he realized that consumers want this and started Brain FM to deliver that concept and that goal and to be able to do it, not putting on a CD and listening to this for six months, but being able to feel it in 30 minutes or less. And that's again where Brain FM started. And then we've kind of taken it from there and expanded across the idea and continue to do so today.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I love too that the way that you sort of worked yourself into Brain fm. You saw this company as something that was a game changing company and you went, I need to be a piece of this, I need to be a part of that. You know, I'm curious what, when you decided, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to. You essentially put your own like income on the line and said, look, I'm going to go work for these guys for free. I think this is so powerful that, that I need to be a part of this. What, what did you come in and bring to the table that you know.

Get my words. But so what, what, what skill set did you bring to the table and what, what made you decide to actually give up potential income working somewhere else to do this for free?

Yeah, great question. So I think skill set wise, so I've built and been involved with a lot of technologies from A to Z and really figuring out like how to grow and expand them and really seeing the big picture of stuff. So I'm kind of a jack of all trades where because I was working with niche businesses, you know, I understand the marketing or I understand the you know like SEO, but I even understand like app development and like I can actually I think also communicate that like business ey. So it's speaking both languages I think is important and then I think also some of the passion and the vision. So when I, I guess the, the last portion of this question of what I brought to the table maybe will help in and why I came to the table. And that is really because I am a user and I always will be because I am someone that needs this, you know. So I used to, when I was developing, I used to work from 10pm to 4am most nights because that's when I found that I could do more work than ever. You know, I actually, I dropped out of high school. I, you know, figured out how to test early out of it so I could, you know, go to college kind of and, and then drop out of college. But you know, I kind of figured that out. But I was late to school like 150 times, you know, a year. I set the record which people weren't happy with. But it's because I never like I had so much difficulty waking up in the morning and then when I was there I had so much difficulty always like just turning my brain on. It wouldn't turn on until like 12 or like 1pm for me. And, you know, I don't know if that was. I don't know where that was from. You know, there's. There's, you know, hypotheses which we can go into about, you know, people growing up in these times. But reality is, you know, I knew I was smart, but I never. I always had difficulty focusing that energy. And it wasn't until I started developing and realizing, oh, I can work whenever I want, that it really started to come out. And I remember using this product once and it was like 11, and it's again, normally where I'm trying to work and just like muscle through it. And one of my days that I had to have a regular schedule, and I remember it feeling like it was two in the morning. I had two cups of coffee and I felt that magic zone that I could just fly and just get things done. And I, Yeah, I just, I remember seeing, okay, if this is where the product is now, where is it going to be in two years, in five years, in 10 years? And I. It's really crazy. Like, I'm actually. I get chills when I say this story because I remember taking my headphones out and putting them down and just like imagining how this can really just change the world. You know, not only on focus, but, you know, this same technology is really like.

An assistant to help you get into a mental state and stay there. So not only do we help people with focusing, but we help people with insomnia, we help people with anxiety, we help people that are on those very large scales where they suffer from insomnia or people that just want to sleep better because they're traveling or whatever. So it really struck me as just such a powerful tool.

And.

And it's not something that, you know, you have to charge $100 million for. It's something that's accessible to people because it works, because we're human and it doesn't matter if you speak English or Mandarin. And I just, I thought that was so powerful. And, you know, that's really where I wanted to jump on board and just explode it.

I think it's super fascinating and like, your. What your experience is, is pretty. So here's what's interesting, because I want to get into the difference, and you already mentioned it, but binaural beats and what you guys have with your technology, because I know it is different and there's a lot of science behind it. So maybe in late, because I've experienced exactly what you're saying with the binaural Beats, but I feel like it's more hit and miss and I'm not sure why, but I know there's a difference there. So maybe, maybe just give us like a layman's. Without the crazy science. Maybe some of the science.

Yeah. So I'm a big person on metaphors, so hopefully let me know if this makes sense.

Let's do that.

Yeah. So binaural beats is basically, you know, the concept, if you're not familiar, is that you have two headphones, one with different frequencies. Right. Or both with different frequencies. And the idea, binaural, is that in both ears, where's the buy comes from, is they merge inside of your brain stem and in your brain, and as a result, it will help you have better focus or better sleep or have better delta waves and things like that. What I would akin that to is actually like a truck backing up. So beep, beep, beep. We have these things that we notice in our environment.

So if a truck starts backing up, you're going to hear it. Because a lot of our evolution, the way we're designed to detect danger and things like that is, you know, alerts and distractions and things. And, you know, what's happening is when you're doing the binaural beats, it's a really, if you think about it, it's a really basic solution to the complex beings that we are as human beings. And we're trying, like our body regulates and tries to reach homeostasis. So if a truck is backing up, beep, beep, beep, you will hear it, you know, maybe for a first 30 second or, I don't know, maybe three minutes, and then eventually you're going to tune it out until it stops beeping. And it's, again, to protect ourselves and other evolutionary mechanisms. But really, like, you know, again, we're just highly sophisticated creatures and we need a little bit more help because again, our brain is always trying to reach that homeostasis, you know. So the difference is that we are actually doing something where we've been able to develop patterns in music as well as modulations, which is, you know, basically frequencies that turn on and off at different intervals, which allow us to almost buffer and craft what we are, what we're doing, or keeping you in a certain mental state. So a better metaphor is a flashlight. So when you have a flashlight that shines into your eye, your pupil will contract because it's a physical response to a stimulus. And what we're doing through music, by certain patterns, is we're able to actually redirect blood flow in your brain based on these patterns and then consistently keep that blood flow. And that's what we're doing. Not for just the first minute, but we're actually. Those patterns are changing as you're listening to the music and to again stay, like, help you arrive at that mental state and then keep you there. Does that make sense?

It does. And I know there's a ton of science. I know you actually have white papers and stuff, and we've read them, which are really fascinating, and maybe we'll even link some of them in the show notes if people want to. Because I know some people just like really want to dig in deep. But it makes sense because like a lot of the binaural type stuff out there that I've used, it's just consistent. It's the same thing for like, you know, however long you want it to go. And I know with Brain fm, it will modulate, it'll change, and of course you can kind of pick your, I guess the brain, you know, the mental state that you're trying to achieve. Is that pretty accurate? Yeah.

So what we're doing is, you know, just to add more color to that, is that we actually start with the brain protocol that we're creating or that mental state and we craft music around it. So we have an AI protocol that's basically applying this to music. And then we have human composers that are making music that you actually want to listen to. So we're building this iterative process so we're not just generating the music from scratch all the time like on, on demand, but we are doing it in a, in a way that, you know, this is something that if you listen to for, you know, three hours, it's, it doesn't feel this robotic. It's actually guided by, you know, this, these humans that are, are saying, hey, this is the story we're going to tell. And then the AI is responsible for making sure that the science works.

Yeah, no, that's super powerful. And I just, you know, it's. Again, it goes back to turning your brain on in situations where, you know, you're maybe trying to find force, something to happen. And because I know Matt and I have chatted about this, I think Matt, you told me that your brain typically won't naturally turn on until like 11 noon.

Yeah, you know, that was something I actually wanted to touch on a little bit, a little bit more. Since you brought that up, was, you know, you were finding that like noon, one o' clock or whatever was when you finally felt like you were able to sort of get into a flow state and you know, you said there was some theories about why that happens. I feel like I kind of live that right now. You know, I feel like with me right now I will get up at, you know, 7:00am or so. That's not my choice of time to wake up. I have two kids, so that's their choice of my time to wake up. So I wake up at about 7am But I don't. And you know, I'll sit down at my computer at 9, 9:30 and start getting some work done. But it's very like passive work. Like I'll check some emails and look at some stats, but I can't seem to get real focused and real like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to get down to like the real meat of the work until afternoon, you know, 12:30, 1:00 clock is when I really start to feel like I just naturally fall into a flow. If I'm not using, you know, the Brain FM or anything like that, that just seems to be my natural tendency. And I'm kind of, I'm curious about what your thoughts were about, why that happens. And you know, maybe, maybe it's not a bad thing, maybe it's not something that needs to be fixed. But, you know, let's discuss that a little bit.

Yeah, of course. So, you know, for this conversation, you know, I do know a little bit about this stuff, but we actually have neuroscientists on staff and I'm sure we, you know, if Kevin was on here with us, he could give a lot more cohesive answers. But I'll do my best. Yeah. So, you know, I think there's a few competing things. I mean, the challenge, you know, that we're really finding and again, one of the advantages of working with these neuroscientists and you know, I guess we can. On another whole tangent, we could talk about how we've structured the company for the future and where we are today. But you know, there's a lot of different kinds of competing ideas. And one of those is circadian rhythms which are affected by light sources. So because there's blue light everywhere, that's one of those things that can affect us and they're keeping us up later or our minds up later. There's also, you know, different kinds of stimulus that are happening naturally or not naturally, but like are surrounding us. So, you know, the tv, it's like three seconds before it changes view. Right. So we have this hyperactive, you know, I Guess attention all the time. And part of that could be from blue light or part of like we're just so stimulated that our mind is more tired until we, you know, and it changes circadian rhythms because of that. There's a lot of different kinds of things. You know, one of the things that you said was maybe it's not a bad thing. And I don't think it is. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But I do think that, you know, myself, and it sounds like yourself, like I, you know, I've been struggling this for forever. And we're not designed as humans to just plug in at 7 and plug out at 5 or whatever that may be. And I think for us working on schedules, it is challenging. We're surrounded by technology. So you can either say, okay, I'm going to turn off all screens for three hours before bedtime, which if you can do that, then amazing. But there may be technology solutions that can also help us and that's kind of our approach to it. So it's, it's one side of the coin. I think all sides are, are valuable. But you know, for different people, different things work best for them.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. I actually, I love that positioning is that it's an aid. It's there to, to give you the ability to tap in when you want to tap in, if you want to tap in at that specific time. And I'm just imagining like all of us, most of us are locked in, in our houses and you know, we're surrounded by kids and other distractions that maybe we weren't used to in an office. More, more or less an office environment. Have you, have you been hearing a lot of different stories around this similar thing and use cases of like within the last like month or so?

Totally. Yeah, totally. You know, it's really interesting. So part of an offer to everyone. We've been doing these YouTube lives where we do these group focus sessions and then I ask people for feedback and things of that. And we've been hearing from brand new people that have never used Brain FM to people that have been using us for years. And it's been a really interesting voice because a lot of people are saying exactly that, that, you know, their wife is in the other room or their kids are running around and they need to really just have me time. So a lot of people are using us to focus, but we're having more time with people that are using our meditate or relax functions, which is really just like music, same. Same kind of concept, but more so to, like, chill out. And, you know, I think it's. I think it's really important. Like, even. Even, you know, people that have amazing relationships, you're not really. No one's really used to being 247 with your partner or with your kids. You know, we have a respite right now, you know, and it's really great because not only is there a physical thing saying, hey, I have headphones in, like, I'm doing something, you know, but it's also a, you know, an aid that this is something that is applying. And then, you know that there's science behind it that's. That's actually going to work. Like, and I think that's been. That's helpful. Like, I think, you know, and, you know, again, there's so many things that we can go into. But, you know, one of the things is, as, you know, we talked about some of the success you had with binaural beats, and there's so many things tied into that. So, you know, obviously we try to separate things with science. So we do control testing to make sure that we can account for placebo effects that we, you know, we do FMRI EEG and like, large game. Large video game experiments on, you know, hundreds of people to make sure that the effects are real and we can measure it. But what's really interesting is there's things tied in with intentionality. So when you say, hey, I'm going to commit to doing this task that does have an effect. There's, you know, it's interesting because, like, you know, I come on a lot of podcasts and I talk to a lot of people and I talk to some people that their whole lives have been changed by binaural beats.

Sure.

And what I say is that it's not, you know, I'm not here trying to take that away from anyone. It's actually saying that, you know, that's probably more you than the binaural beats itself. And now what we're trying to do is just say that same experience you don't even have to think about. We deliver every time, but we still just make you better at being you. You know what I mean?

That makes sense. So you're basically saying it's like the act of turning on the binaural beats or going to some YouTube channel or Spotify, and you intentionally saying, this is my time to focus on X thing for, like, you know, an hour. Basically, Brain FM is like, okay, cool, let's upgrade that, because it's probably more you than anything. Rather by, you know, with. With Brain. Brain fm, really putting the science behind it and then, you know, modulating like you were saying.

Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. The guy that created Binaural. So binaural Beats is actually like pop science leftover from the 70s. So binaural beats is in the same level of subliminal messaging. Right.

Interesting.

And the guy that actually created Binaural Beats later wrote a retraction on that, but it was kind of left into the psyche of everything. And it's. It's out there. If you search YouTube, there's hundreds of millions of views on binaural Beats. There's also hundreds, millions of views on vacuum. Vacuum cleaner sounds. Right. Which is a whole nother thing. But, you know, really, it's. It's. You know, there is. There's a lot less data supporting that, and there's tons of white papers that we've been able to do and test. And again, yeah, it's really about the psychological triggers that are taking effect. So now you can have psychological triggers and the science in combination. You know, you're on a rocket. And that's, again, what we're trying to equip people with, because, you know, we're not. We're not. We can't. I can't make you better at what you're doing because I don't even know what you're doing half the time, but all I'm doing is guiding you and. Or I'm not. The music is really guiding what you're already capable of and unlocking yourself.

Yeah. So it's almost like the Binaural Beats thing is kind of. It may even be more of like a habitual thing. Your brain is sort of chained, trained. That when I put my headphones on and I listen to this kind of music, I tend to get more focused. And it's more of just that sort of routine element where with something like Brain fm, there's. There's actual scientific elements to the rhythms that you're hearing and the music that you're hearing, and it's less of that. I'm sure there's an element of that too, where you're sort of training your brain. When I put my headphones on and I turn on Brain fm, that's my focus. Time. And your brain start to sort of gets used to that routine. But there's a little more science to the Brain FM than there is to the Binaural Beats concept.

It's like Pavlon dogs, you know, with the binaural beats, it's like.

Yeah, it's interesting. So triggering is a psychological effect. And one of my friends, he does speaking engagements, and he was telling me that whenever he goes on stage, he takes a cinnamon Listerine tab and puts in his mouth, because whenever he feels super, super confident, he's been able to train that cinnamon flavor. Whenever he's confident or has a great time or he was positive news for, like, six months, he puts cinnamon Listerine tabs in his mouth, and everybody speaks to tens of thousands of people. He does it, and he just. It just feels empowered. And it's really interesting, you know, some of these psychological things that are actually built from these evolutionary principles that, you know, again, we've been able to learn about, but, you know, we're actually taking advantage of on, like, the acoustic set.

Yeah, yeah. It's funny. We were actually talking to Jay Abraham on a podcast episode not too long ago, and he was telling us how every time he speaks or goes on podcasts or does interviews or anything, he puts a little bit of peppermint essential oil right under his nose and smells the peppermint up into his nose.

Yeah, yeah. It's a super strong, like, grounding thing, because smell is. Is really strong. But actually, that's why we're doing it through acoustic, because it's really interesting without going into so much detail. But your. Your.

Like, humans attention to salience, which is the difference in sound, is super, super dramatic. You know, sight is something, but sight you can turn off by closing your eyes. If I said, matt, when you're sleeping and I was in your house and you're not regularly hearing my voice, you would probably wake up. Right. It's something you can't turn off. And there's a lot of interesting things that, yeah, we're just kind of using to our advantage.

All right, so I'm curious. What's the difference between, like, the, you know, the focus mode, the relax mode, the sleep mode? Like, what differentiates the different beats and audios that I'm listening to? What would be the difference if I'm, like, trying to focus at my computer versus trying to go to sleep at night?

Yeah, great question. So there's two main components that are doing that. One is the music itself, so genres and. And the themes of the music. So people associate, you know, like techno music and things like that with working and less with sleep, even though some people, you know, do love that. So one is the genre and the kind of idea, like, the. The themes of it. So, like, bells and stuff. And relaxing music. The other stuff is our technology. So as I was mentioning before, with the patterns and different kinds of modulations, we're actually increasing the speed of those or decreasing them. And really that's a process of entrainment, which I believe we talked about before.

And on the most basic level, it's basically when you're focusing, you're moving faster, you're thinking faster, and then when you're sleeping, you're actually thinking a little bit slower and more calm. And that's exactly what our technology is helping you aid to do.

Yeah, and that's, that's what's interesting because, yeah, we've, we've. And I think we chatted about it before is, you know, there's like this TED Talk, for instance. Yeah. We were talking about the entrainment of like, kind of tapping yourself or you know, and slowing down that tap for sleep. Whereas. Yeah, productivity. And I've, I've definitely, you know, we've had people on this podcast say, yeah, they just listen to the same like, techno song on YouTube all day long. It's just like.

Like, it's just like, oh my God, I probably have a heart attack. But.

But it sounds like, yeah, it's, it's quicker for focus and then a little slower for sleep and relaxation meditation. It sounds like.

Yeah. And then now what we're moving into is actually more personalization, so understanding how you use the product, what, you know, what happens to you. Because everyone's a slightly different, you know, everyone's on these certain scales, as I was mentioning before, on, you know, some people have, like, no one is.01 on whether they have ADHD or not. It's. Everyone's on a sliding scale. And as we learn more about you and as we integrate into like, wearables and like, things like that, we can actually start fine tuning the music in a greater degree.

Yeah, interesting. So is that based off of, like. Because I know you could skip different songs or like, are there some criteria and maybe this proprietary. And it's. Okay, you don't want to talk about it. Personalization. Because that's actually, that's fascinating.

Yeah. So what's interesting is because there is an actual measurable effect, we're in the beginning of developing and starting to build a high degree of personalization and measure from the person's own devices that they're wearing. So, you know, right now we're basically doing more on, you know, how you're skipping and maybe different people in certain kinds of your. The same use cases. So if you're using us at 4 o' clock in the morning, we put you in a certain bucket of people that are also using us at 4 o' clock in the morning, in our time zone and starting to try to match the best for you. And, you know, we're trying to improve that every day, but we're actually. Because there is a physiological effect of you listening to music and blood flow changing, we're actually able to measure that with hrv, so your heart rate variance. Eventually we'll go to a place which, again, we're not there yet, but we're moving towards, is figuring out, okay, this is your magic focus zone. This is your magic sleep zone, your magic relax zone. And now we're able to fine tune, based on your activity, based on what you're doing, and based on your past effects, what's best for Joe and Matt.

I think that's the next version of this app in total. But I'm really excited for that because that opens up things that we can't do right now or is very challenging, like workout music. Our technology can do it, but because there's so much different ways people work out, even just running, we have to really fine tune it. We did a test with 100 people that are athletes and they're all runners. And some people were like, this is amazing. And they use it every single day. And some people are like, I can't run on this. And we found that everyone has different strides, everyone's different, you know, all these kinds of different things. And we need to learn more about the person, be able to adapt to that.

Yeah, so that, that would come from like, like, like wearable. So, like, if you have like an Apple Watch or like a Fitbit or something, it might pull data from that on, like, your heart rate. Is that kind of the idea?

Yeah, so that's exactly what we're developing right now. And then being able to start developing the idea of, like, are you sleeping with a partner?

Have both of you guys tell us, are you a light sleeper? Are you a heavy sleeper? And obviously all of this stuff is only if people want to give us this data, which I think is a really important thing to mention, but the idea is the more we learn about you, the more you use the product. Not only can we help you more on, you know, the curation and just giving you music so you don't have to think about it, but we can grow and make more music, specifically, you know, adapted to you. And that's, I think, really exciting.

And, yeah, I've Also seen some like other tools that, that do similar stuff where maybe you'll listen to the Focus tool for like an hour and then afterwards it'll say, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how focused did you feel during that period of time? Is that kind of something like along those lines as well? Or is it going to be more based off of just like the technology element of like wearables and things?

Great question. So we actually every now and again we do ask certain buckets of users similar questions like that. So, you know, based on when this comes out, people may actually experience. How was that for you? Give us a thumbs up or thumbs down and then we help calibrate that person or a bucket of those people. But eventually if we're able to adapt wearables, we can do it automatically. There's a lot of challenges there though, because a lot of wearables don't work 100%. Everything has a degree of inaccuracy because they're not medical grade. You're sweating, you're all these things. We actually have to build like neural nets to compensate for that and like all this crazy stuff. So this is still a little bit off, but the concept and the tests that we've done actually support that. And again, that's one of the benefits of working with the people that are actually developing this technology and then also pushing the science research on this.

Yeah, I love this because it's like exactly what you said. You have the amazing staff, you have, yeah. The scientists needed there. You have all these white papers, research studies. And I think that's where it, it, it's kind of a bummer that some of these binaural beat apps, I know they're out there and these are some of them that I have on my phone. And you know, they're probably mainly developed by just a developer, you know, and, and not actually backed by a lot of science or, or consistently evolve. And that's what I'm, I'm super fascinated with everything you're saying and I actually want to go deeper into the science just because really cool.

Well, you know, talking about the science, one of the other tools that we've used in the past to try to get into focus or to relaxation or sleep or that kind of thing is like the, like the theta waves and beta. I don't remember what waves do what, but there's like apps out there that, you know, if you use theta waves, it does, it's supposed to do this for you. If you use beta waves, it does this for you, if you use alpha waves, it does this for you. Is. Is there any of that kind of stuff going on behind the scenes with Brain fm, or is there sort of. Do you have any more information around the science of that sort of thing?

Sure. Yeah. So there's tons of stuff that we can go into on this point. It's similar to binaural beats, but there's also some science that's not true. So let's say I wanted to give you or have increased delta waves. That's actually a result of measuring your brain activity. And usually in healthy individuals, you have all of the waves in different kinds of patterns and different kinds of.

Intensity. Right. So, you know, usually even if you're in deep, deep, deep sleep, you know, you're not experiencing these other, you know, things. There's usually blips and all these other stuff. And, you know, they're marketing it, saying, hey, this is a theta wave generator or this is a, you know, beta wave or whatever that may be. And, you know, how are they. How are you doing that? And usually it is an effect by, you know, doing this binaural beats to get that effect. It's kind of a different marketing tactic, I guess. Yeah. You know, I don't know what you're specifically referencing, but.

That'S what I've seen, you know, when people come to me for that. But the, you know, different kinds of waves in your head, you know, are measurable and are real. It's just about how are you increasing your odds to have, you know, one or the other. And again, remembering that, you know, our brains are super complex. We know more about Pluto than we do about how our brains actually work. And I think a lot of people, they say, okay, does this make sense? And does this work? Right? And. And it's. It's really challenging because some things that you think make sense don't always. Like, it's not always correlative. And a lot of people, because. And this is one of the reasons why we have so much science and we try to really push it, is because a lot of people are out there and saying, okay, how do I feel? And feeling is not a great measurement of an activity or doing anything. You know, let's take brain. If I'm out of it, and let's say I gave you a vitamin, and you're like. Or, like, you know, cbd, right? Or something like that, which is a craze right now. I have friends that own CBD companies, and they. They have educated me that it's not all the same. You know, you can get stuff from, you know, isolates from China. You can get stuff that's organic, you can get stuff that's water encapsulated. There's so much stuff. And then how do you measure the effectiveness of that to what you want to do? And you know, it's really n of 1. And what we're trying to do is give people the opportunity to say, hey, this is actually n of 1,000, which is, you know, 1,000 people participated out of this and we saw this increased effect for every single one of them. And, you know, really allowing people to say, okay, now instead of me like probing myself, I can actually just focus on doing it. You know, one of the really interesting things is sometimes people use our product and they write in, they go, it didn't work. And I go, why did it not work? And they say, oh, well, I turn it on and I didn't fall asleep. And, and I go, you know, okay, but it looks like your usage history was 2:00pm so were you trying to take a nap? And they're like, no, no, no, I was just listening to it and I expected to fall asleep. And. And you know, we're actually, we're not, we're, we're purposely not making it super, super powerful to that point because, you know, it's actually supposed to be just a slight aid. You know, we're doing really interesting things in like medical testing and like, like different things for like pre and post op surgery, which are like much greater levels that are, you know, helping people recover faster and things like that. But, you know, the consumer aid product is, is, is not to like crank you up to 10 because, you know, if you had. So like, have you ever had like nine cups of coffee? You can't do this like that.

No, man.

You know, so it's actually like habit. It's hitting the right zone and not being too focused, if that's a word, if not having too much energy, just having the right amount of energy to, you know, nap or relax or meditate or, you know, whatever that may be. And that's, that's an important.

Yeah, yeah. And the apps that I was referring to, I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to say the name of the app just because, you know, I don't know if it's a competitor or I don't know if it's just like made up science or whatever. But. Yeah, but basically what it does is when you turn it on, it basically makes like a hummingbird sound in your ear. And when you change it to this sort of different waveform, the humming sound either gets higher or lower pitched. And supposedly based on like what waveform you have, it'll either make you really focused, really energetic, really sleepy, that sort of thing. But again, I don't know how much of it has been like, I'm expecting it to work and there's like a placebo effect and how much of it's actual science.

Yeah, that sounds like the binaural beats or the isochronic tone. So it, because it's playing a sound and saying, hey, this is the effect. Usually that's how people have tried to do that before. Again, what's really interesting, and I guess we haven't touched on this, is that one of the reasons why Brain FM hasn't been done before is actually because this is the only time it can be done.

What's interesting is we're using AI to assist humans in creation of this music. And what's happening is actually every single millisecond, there are certain kinds of math and frequencies and patterns that we're turning on and turning off in certain, you know, orders to be able to assist this. Now, I guess theoretically you could do this by hand, but it would take you six months or eight months to make a song. And now it takes like, I don't know, maybe a week for a composer to create something. Another effect is that everyone has great headphones now. So one of the core principles that we remind people is that we say use headphones now specifically for our focus music, because you have these modulations in your ear that are turning on and turning off and helping assist you. But if they are bouncing off different things in the room and then it's being distorted and entering your ear, it may not be the same effect. It still can work, but it's not 100% itself. Slower modulations like relax and sleep can be played off of high fidelity speakers, no problem. But what's really great is that everyone has AirPods now. Everyone has Bluetooth sound canceling headphones. And part of that is this perfect timing of science. On the science side of things, they're actually using similar technology and we're working with labs with Northeastern University University. They're actually using oscillating gamma ray or oscillating like waves on a certain spectrum through light to cure Alzheimer's. And it looks super promising. And again, all of the science is really bleeding edge. So it's combination of productizing and creating something that we have been leading on the neuroscience Side, so all this stuff is patented, but then comboing that with the right AI and actually being able to achieve that, because AI is actually a thing now, and then also marrying with the technology that consumers have. And that's why in the 70s, this wasn't invented, because it couldn't be. Does that make sense?

Totally.

Yeah. No. That's super fascinating. I love the implications of how this can be applied. Like you said, in hospitals and folks recovering, you know, for certain things, you can ramp it up and have different usages for that as well. I think this is just super fascinating and maybe we kind of wrap things up a little bit. And because I know you're a big. Obviously there's a lot of productivity hacks, I'm sure that you use yourself and maybe folks at a home environment, as I hear my baby kind of screaming in the background, hopefully it doesn't come through. Like, what? And obviously Brain FM is like a crucial piece of all this. Like what are just a handful of ways that people can just increase the productivity in these kind of new noisy environments that they find themselves in?

Yeah, so a few different things. I think I'm really big on setting yourself up for success. So part of that is by having the right habits. So I think that's number one that I would advise people to do. And, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, I'm going to try this Brain FM thing. What I say is try to just add this into habits you already have. So, you know, Matt, you know, you wake up and you, you have challenges maybe getting into that zone. Do you wake up and have a cup of coffee?

I used to. I don't drink coffee anymore, though.

Okay. So maybe if you do tea or something like that, or you have like, you brush your teeth, it's really easy to like habit stack and just add something like Brain FM into that to really develop and. And further is just creating better habits. So I think that's the true start of all better productivity because you want to build in the habit of executing high quality work. And then there's certain ways that you can do that more. So. So I'm a big person on themes or.

Themes of calendar planning, so you may have heard before, like on Mondays you do marketing, on Tuesdays you do whatever. And that works. But for a lot of people, that breaks down because we live in a dynamic world with all these different things. So I actually recommend breaking it down into chunks and having sprints and, you know, I can't show you my Calendar right now. But if you saw it, you would see that every day I have two hour work sprints and they are already planned, you know, like I already know what's going to happen in six months from now. And I have a certain habitual cycle. So Mondays I wake up and you know, I check in with my team. I have a team stand up meeting and then I have a certain window that I have meetings and then I dive into like deep work on certain kinds of tasks. And that's super helpful in just organizing it, I think another one again as I'm just like listing things off as they come to my head. This is good, is really setting intentions like we talked about before, but you controlling that. As humans, we're able to sit down and say, I can predict the future. If I say I'm going to do this and then I fast forward an hour and I've worked on it, what does that look like? I really like to tell people to actually physically take a pen and paper and say, hey, you have two hours. Write down what you want to accomplish using smart goals and find specific, measurable, actionable. What's the last relevant time sensitive.

Time sensitive.

Yeah, yeah. And really saying, okay, at the end of this two hour sprint, what are you going to be happy with yourself by getting done? And then just saying, hey, you're not. You're working indefinitely. You're just working for this time. And there's things like pomodoro methods, there's different time intervals that you can do into that. And actually we, we do different kinds of, you know, Brain FM Live as well as coming to the app soon we'll do Brain FM intervals. But again, what we want to do is I think two sets of actions is on one side having the right tools. You know, Brain fm, certain tools to block out distractions. Like Freedom is a wonderful tool. It'll stop you from going to Facebook and all these things if you need training, you know, and then, you know, finding all these tools that you need. And then the other side is again developing habits and rituals that set you up for success so you can use that tool the best way possible.

Dude, that was absolutely gold. I haven't seen the Freedom app, but I'm going to look that up now. But yeah, I love this. I love this all. And it's only enhanced further with Brain FM as well. When you just layer it on there.

Yeah. And one of the cool things that I've found since I've started using Brain FM is when I sit down to read a book I've started putting on my headphones and turning on Brain fm. I mean, there's multiple reasons for that. I'm in a house with two kids and my wife and when I put my headphones on, I can kind of tune it out. They might be watching TV or playing in the other room or something and it helps me just kind of tune things out a little bit. But also I've noticed that I read faster when I'm using Brain fm. I will put it on, I will read, I will get lost in a book and then the next thing I know I'll look up and maybe 30 minutes have passed and it'll felt like 10 minutes and I'll be way further into the book than I would have normally gotten in 30 minutes. Like for whatever reason, it makes me read faster.

Yeah, I mean that is exactly the effect on all things. So that's the Brain FM effect, if I could coin that term.

You just did. But let's. Yeah, Dan, this has been super awesome. And so I did see. Yeah, even before you mentioned it, I was checking out your YouTube and I saw the deep work, you know, lives that you've been doing, what the last couple weeks or so I think it is. And yeah, you're getting a ton of people on there. I think it's just interesting. So, I mean, people can check that out just when your YouTube page, I believe it is.

Yeah, you can search for Brain FM on YouTube. You know, if people want to try it, we give five sessions away for everyone.

To, you know, try it themselves because it's really an experiential product and that's when we encourage people to try. You know, and if people want more than that, you know, they can even email me. You know, I'm always happy to hear how people are using it. You know, testimonials, you know, we, I get, I get an email once a week from people saying, this is amazing, I haven't slept in 30 years. Or X, Y and Z. And you know, that's one of the reasons why like I, you know, if we had more time, I could tell you like dozens and dozens of like life changing testimonials that are pretty crazy. But you know, that's the reason why we're doing this is really, you know, to power people up and give them another option. And yeah, you know, I'd love to. Yeah, keep growing and sharing it and going from there.

I think it's rad. I think it's super cool. And yeah, I get it. Re sign up now because I've been losing a lot of time and not being as productive. So I appreciate that and I think it's just super fascinating overall, just all that productivity. If you could stack all these habits like you said, we've talked a lot about habits on previous episodes and then just layer all these aids on there. Anything to help the human experience make be a lot more enjoyable and just make the most out of this. I love what you're doing there. And you leverage a bunch of cool tech that's never been available before too.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, man. We always like to ask as well if you have a book or something you just like find yourself going to often or recommending others, is there something that you would. You would name?

Yeah, I guess I always come up with two books when I get asked this.

Let's see, Atomic Habits is just fantastic. Again, big on habit setting. And then have you guys read Relentless before?

No. Who's that by?

So that's by Tim S. Grover, which was a coach to Michael Jordan. It's really interesting because I'm actually not really a huge sports guy. Sorry. But there's so many wonderful metaphors and things you can learn from that. And it's actually, it's kind of like on the flip side of most books for self development where concentrates on your like ego side on like, why do you want to do things? What is your selfish desires and how can you align that with something that is unselfish and if you can do that, that's really, you have unlimited fuel to do whatever you want. And I think when people ask me a lot of the time, like, you know, how do I. How do I go from, you know, having an idea or not knowing what to do to being passionate in a business. I usually ask them one, to start with where they're curious because really your curiosity should be the thing that guides you into doing anything you do. And then two, usually reading Relentless because then you can find out what do you want to.

What are your deep desires on why you want to do anything. And then again, combo that in, layer that in and then stack it together and go do whatever you want.

I just got that book because that sounds absolutely amazing. And Atomic Habits is great too. Matt and I have talked a lot about that.

Well, awesome, Dan, thanks so much. This information's been absolutely fascinating. Is there anywhere you want to send people after listening to this episode to go learn more about Brain FM and what you're doing?

Yeah, sure. So people can go on the app stores, type Brain FM in or if they go to Brain FM hustle. So Brain FM.

They'Ll get 20% off and those five sessions to try for free to see the experience for yourself.

Nice.

That's awesome.

Awesome, man. Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Do you want to learn the hard skills necessary to support your favorite shows?

Well.

Cool. Our friends Gina, Haley and Mel created something called Podcast Production School. Now it's an online course designed to help you master the skills and strategies needed to launch, manage and grow podcasts, including things like audio editing, show notes, creation, and promotions. So download their free podcast production or their launch Checklist today@podcastproductionschool.com Go Flowchart. Again, that's podcastproductionschool.com Go flowchart.

Thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you dug it. I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do live webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's easy webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform. And we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody comes, can register, and then it, you know, they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it yet, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing tool. And Casey is actually hooking you up. He said, for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. He's giving 25% off of the membership to use Easy webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has, but he's hooking you up with 25% off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle that's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easywebinar.com hustole. It's a awesome tool. You're gonna dig it, so just go grab it. Check it out. Easywebinar.com hustle See? No, not see ya. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know. I don't know how to close these things. Go get Easy Webinar. Talk to you later.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it.

We love you.