SSP 056: Matty Wilson - Infused Coffee: The New Brain Food

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the State Shifters Podcast. My name is Jordan Kanlish, and in this episode today, I'm going to be talking about one of my passions, one of my passions. Of all you guys that know me, you know, I love personal development and working through, you know, the inner blocks that often get in our way of living our purpose, having the life we want. But a large part of that is really raising the standard across the board around what it is that you put in your body. And energy is a big factor in that. And one of the things that I always turn to, to have, like, charge up my energy and also just because I love the taste is coffee. And I know for people who are listening to this, you're probably a coffee lover as well. And I've brought on someone from Perth. His name is Matty, Matty Wilson, and he's created the brand IQ Brew. And for anyone who's familiar with cognitive enhancers such as lion's mane and really starting to use medicinal mushrooms to enhance coffee and other beverages, this is the episode for you. Or if you're just interested in learning more about how to find good quality coffee and get the most out of your morning brew, there's a lot of insights in here because I know a lot of my Canadian, North American listeners are used to just getting their Starbucks or getting their Tim Hortons coffee. And it's, trust me, it's shit. And it's time to level up the game and really enjoy the finer things in life. For me, really like good coffee, good wine, good chocolate, and really finding and appreciating the best what's out there. Because life's too short to drink, you know, cheap stuff. So, guys, Matty has set up a discount code for his coffee. The brand is IQ Brew, and if you Google that, you can order their coffee if it's resonated with you. But the discount code is State shifters. You get 10% off your coffee. But enjoy the episode. If you love coffee, you're going to love this. As always, thanks for joining and enjoy this one. It's a beauty.

Welcome to the State Shifters Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you discover your true potential through connecting the mind, body and soul.

All right, Matthew Wilson, welcome to the State Shifters podcast, mates. How you doing?

I'm feeling fantastic. I'm pretty jade up. I was just drinking something. Just a half serving of IQ Brew. It is late at night, so I don't want to drink the full serving in.

Yeah, understandably, mate. Man, for people who don't know about you, look I just stumbled across your page on Instagram and I had to reach out and connect because I resonated so much with what you were doing with your company, IQ Brew, and you guys create like enhanced coffee. It's like cognitive coffee. And for anyone that's following this podcast and following my journey, know how much I love coffee. But also recently I've been getting around, you know, using mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms, which is lion's mane, to really enhance these brews.

Right.

And what you've done is you've kind of created a really unique combination of enhancing coffee with medicinal mushrooms and some other little add ons. People who are probably in this space already may be familiar with like the four Sigmatic brand and things like that. But bro, I'm excited to hear more about how you've come into this journey and more about what you guys are up to. So maybe for people who have just heard about IQ Brew, like, what is it about and how this all come into, come into existence.

Yeah, sweet. So I've been in the coffee my whole life. I was in the army for eight years. Pretty much as a soldier, you run on coffee, you know, you might have three or four a day. That's what we were sort of getting around. We were going through jars of instant coffee within, you know, two to three days. It was absolutely out of control. And I was also sort of into nootropics at the same time, sort of taking these little cognitive enhancers, seeing where I could get the benefits from. It was right in my training. I was right in my just reading and sort of doing little, little business side ventures here and there. So that's sort of what really exposed me to the world of nootropics. I wasn't really into mushrooms at all. That wasn't really sort of on my radar at all. And it was really around 2018, I started looking into the distance benefits of mushrooms and whatnot and really started getting into that biohacking world, if that's what you'd call it. Yeah. And you know, that's where I was like, all about sleep and, you know, like blocking out blue light as soon as the sun goes down and, you know, just absolutely going ham on all these packs and cold showers every day, doing all that sort of jazz. And one thing that I kept doing was I was taking nootropics, but I was taking them in pills. And that's basically what the majority of nootropics on the market are. They're, you know, pretty much all brands out there. They'll just think of A nootropic, it's. It's a pill, it's something you take.

And Matty, for people who don't know what nootropics are, they're essentially natural brain enhancers.

Essentially. Right, yeah, they can. Can be natural, they can be synthetic, they can sort of. Basically, a nootropic is anything, a smart drug, if you will. Anyone who's seen the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper where he takes this pill and essentially he can absorb all the information that comes towards him. He can learn super quick. You know, he becomes. He reads a book and he knows everything about the book. He can read it in like 2 minutes flat, all that sort of jazz. Not to that extent, a much lower extent in the real world with nootropics, but they're just certain ingredients that can enhance, you know, certain hormones, the growth of other things within the brain that can sort of help you learn better, learn quicker, stay focused. And. And yeah, that's where the big surge of nootropics came from, was from people wanting to be better, from wanting to learn things quicker, wanting to become smarter by studying more intensely and all these things. And yeah, like, it was always affiliated with having a nootropic is always, you know, having a pill. And I started to sort of once using the mushrooms, I'd be mixing in these mushrooms, I'd be mixing in certain things with my coffee. I was blending butter with my coffee. I was doing all these things and I thought, what if I started mixing my nootropics with my coffee? So I was breaking open the pills and mixing them in the coffee as well. And then I was sitting down for my business partner at the time, we had a coffee subscription box where we'd send out fleshly roasted beans from around Australia to your door. And she basically said, we should 100% do this, do this thing, instant coffee, nootropics mixed together, it'd be great. So it was a very vague idea. We didn't know how we were going to do it or anything like that. So we just basically went from writing a few ideas in the book to then sort of sending a few emails, making a few calls before we got a reply. I think we must have emailed 20 different sort of companies and absolutely none of them replied. Until one day, this one company replied within 10 minutes saying, this is freaking sweet, let's do it. And yeah, sort of it went from there and grew from there. And ever since then, I was a fan of the four Sigmatic mushroom coffee as well. But what I found was Great products, they've got a great range and all that sort of jazz. But their serving sizes were quite small. So to get the effects that you would see in these studies on WebMD in regards to lion's mane and helping with brain health and preventing Alzheimer's and all that, you'd probably need to take five or six sachets of that coffee to really get the benefits of the ingredients, the active ingredient. That was one thing I really sort of wanted to rectify when creating IQ Brew. Yeah, and that was another thing. I just wanted to have my own coffee and do it right, I guess you'd say. And yeah, have something that was Australian made. I mean, the other company, they're from Sweden, they're from overseas, so there's nothing really being done in Australia in that sort of area. So, yeah, it was just one of those things where it's like the idea comes into your head and you start poking at it and you start prodding at it and then you start getting some signals back and you go, well, this could actually work.

So, yeah, yeah, 100%, man. And really, when it comes to like coffee and nootropics, like for me, once I started to get these little enhancements, these little tweaks, these little hacks, like you said in your day, and you start to notice the difference it makes in the way you feel. It can be really such a powerful level up. Lion's mane being one of them. Like just these little additions. Because I'm sure everyone listening to this has, you know, I would say majority of people love coffee. I've just come back from living in Toronto. Canadians love their coffee as well, but the standard for coffee out there is just so much lower than what we have here in Australia. So I would say a lot less. North Americans are probably aware of how to enhance coffee and how to make it such a powerful biohack or brain hack in your day. But then when you start to play around with these medicinal mushrooms as well, it really takes things to the next level. So I guess for people who are listening, who maybe for one are used to just drinking their Starbucks or instant coffee and have them leveled up their coffee game, maybe you can tell us like why it is important to start to seek out higher quality coffee. Probably the Aussies who are listening, they're probably aware of this stuff already, but maybe some people aren't. Maybe some people just go to their local cafe and they don't really pay too much attention to the beans. But, you know, why is the quality of the coffee important? What have you guys done to source out the right type?

Yes, that's a really good question because a lot of people, they really just go for, you know, coffee is a ritual for them. It's just something that we automatically do in the morning. Whether it's standard Nescafe blend, 43, you know, the cheapest instant coffee you can get, or whether it's going to your favorite barista every morning, going out of your way, out of work, you know, just to get that good quality coffee that tastes good and makes you feel good. There really is a sort of another layout to coffee that a lot of people, it's, it's almost like an iceberg. What you see on the surface is this great tasting drink that seemingly just perks you up. And some people, it's, they can't, you know, start their morning without it, but really underneath it is, you know, where are these beans coming from? How are they being processed? So they dry processed, are they washed? All these different things, are they, are they single origin, are they a blend? Are they coming directly from the farmer? Are they going from the farmer? Are they being taken to a third party distributor? Do they have mycotoxins, do they have molds? All these little things that no one really knew about until I think only recently, the past couple of years, it's been people like Ben Greenfield and a lot of other companies sort of bringing this to life. Light on why sourcing good quality organic coffee is definitely the way to go and why it is important. And because people do have coffee so often, it is important to actually get good quality coffee. A lot of people see these labels like organic and all that sort of jazz and well, if it doesn't taste any different, well, there's no reason to sort of get it. Why pay the extra? It's just going to taste like a normal coffee. But then what we're not realizing is we're having this coffee every day of our lives. Over the lifespan of a human being, if you're having coffee every single day, it's whether or not if it has mold in it, it's going to start affecting you. It's a very cumulative process. So it's really important to ensure early on that you're getting a high quality coffee and that you continue that effort to sort of source out a better coffee throughout your time. That's something I experienced definitely through our previous business, which was the coffee subscription box. I used to be in the army. It was just instant coffee, whatever it was, get the caffeine into you because sometimes you Just needed, you know, grams of the stuff to get you through the day. And then once I started exploring roasters, local roasters within Perth and learning where they got their beans from and that they had really great relationships with the farmers they knew, they'd put on the coffee bag itself the name of the farmer, because that's how sort of closely they worked with them. They'd get the beans as quickly as possible to ensure they were as fresh as possible. They would go to the actual farms over in Colombia, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, wherever the beans were coming from. And they were finding the farms that sort of suited, sort of the message that this company wanted to put across. So whether that was the highest of quality, having a good quality sort of roast, and these small batches, roasters or what are they called, so they're people that source out small batches of coffee, they buy directly from the farmer, they're supporting the farmer, they're supporting the area, that farm. And by buying that smaller batch and dealing directly with the farmer, they're locking in a more pure coffee. There's usually very little. Is there going to be any toxins used in the process of making this coffee? Because a lot of these farmers are very passionate people. If you have a farmer that is producing, you know, say in Brazil, huge, huge amounts of coffee are produced in Brazil. You're going to have farms that are producing millions of tons of coffee per year. That's a very numbers game. They need to, they need to spray toxins on all their plants and all their coffee beans and all that sort of jazz. So if you're getting your coffee, say from a large retail chain, it's more likely that's going to come from there.

Like Starbucks.

Yeah.

However, if you problem there, they're probably sourcing coffee from a large farm who's mass producing these beans and is probably spraying these beans with some form of, you know, like fertilizer or something to keep these beans fresh. Is that correct? Is that why there's so many toxins on there?

100%, yeah. And because the average person, when they go to order a coffee, they get it with milk and that pretty much just destroys the real taste of the coffee. So as long as it kind of tastes caffeine, they're okay with it. Whereas when you go to these small batch roasters that are importing the beans directly, usually what you're getting is very high quality products. It's very, very fresh. Within the month, it's probably been harvested, sent to Australia and it's in the roaster at the Roastery. So through doing that previous business venture of finding freshly roasted beans and sort of sending them out to our subscribers, that's where I really learned a lot of that process. And sort of found out that in Australia we're very lucky that a lot of our roasters are doing that process because we have such a small population. We're very spread out across Australia, just in Perth itself. Perth is the most remote capital city on the planet. We have a lot of our coffee is roasted locally because we don't. We can't get it from anywhere else. You know, we can't afford to have it shipped from Brisbane or Sydney and have it aged and all that sort of jazz. So Australia is very lucky. Other places like America that have large population density tend to receive the, how do I put it nicely, the crap coffee, really, they just get dumped on them. The millions of tons of sort of leftovers, the blends, you know, they've got tons from Ethiopia, tons from Brazil, they just chuckle together, they throw it out there. America is actually quite renowned for having very poor quality coffee. Everyone I've ever heard of going over there and coming back to Australia.

Terrible, mate. Yeah, and I'll pick on Canada as well. They're not too much better now, these coffee chains like Tim Hortons and Starbucks and Costa Coffee and shit like this. And I remember going in there and drinking this stuff and the beans are so burnt. Starbucks burns their beans deliberately to sort of keep it a standard across the board in terms of taste. But maybe, you know, if someone is only ever used to drinking poor quality coffee beans, they probably don't know what the difference is and why they should even bother looking to find good quality beans. And from what I've observed through drinking poorer quality coffee, you tend to get like a quick spike in energy and then you crash straight away. Or sometimes you even get like brain fog. You sort of, you can feel the effect of those toxins. Like, why have you decided to prioritize the quality? Is it because of that exact reason that the feeling or the effect in terms of the lifespan of the caffeine and obviously the benefits of the polyphenols, which is in the coffee as well, maybe run us through some of the benefits someone can expect to get when they drink a good quality bean compared to one that's maybe lesser quality?

Yeah, definitely. So like you just touched on briefly, there was the polyphenols getting a good quality coffee. And it really does depend on. And that's the beauty with coffee. I absolutely love the whole coffee game because you can experiment with these tastes and variants so much. I mean if you get a coffee that is grown at a very high altitude, it's going to be more stressed. So these beans are going to be producing more polyphenols, they're going to have a much richer, richer taste as opposed to getting coffee that's grown closer towards the sea level. You're going to get a more fruity sort of variant of the taste, lower polyphenols. Or you can play with all these little different methods and all these different sort of beans and whatnot. And then even then it comes down to how it's roasted. So I've tasted coffees at a roastery in Sydney where they had four different roasters and the exact same bag of beans, but each coffee tasted almost entirely different. Just down to the roasters profile and how they did it. And just to showcase how different coffee can be. That was a very eye opening experience for me. But within coffee itself, me personally, I do find brain fog to be everyone has something different. Some people don't recognize it at all, they don't feel it at all. There's also tend to be people that just were like a flat white, you know, where they're getting a lot of inflammation from. You know, that's the last of their concern is the quality of the coffee with having in that. But for me, like you said, brain fog being, which I would describe as being hyped up, being on caffeine, being enthused to do something but not exactly knowing how to do it, not really being precise and concise in your ways of doing it. But really for IQ Brew, the main part behind it was getting a coffee that you didn't have to notice the difference from it and a poorer quality coffee if you had them side by side, you didn't have to notice these differences in how you'd feel. And if it created, if the caffeine was the reason behind the brain fog or whatnot, it just needed to be a long term solution. Something that if you enjoyed it every day, by the time you're 50 years old, hopefully you have a lower risk of Alzheimer's than the alternative. Hopefully you have a lower risk of sort of inflammatory sort of signs and all these other little things that can be caused by mold and toxins in the body, hopefully you have lower risks of cardiovascular disease and all these little things that over a lifetime of consuming a product that is subpar can accumulate. So that's really where it came from with me is just daily. I love coffee a lot of people I know import coffee from a certain provider in America because it's. I'll just say keon because it's affiliated with, you know, we've certified it as bulletproof.

Is another big brand that people are getting their coffees from. People who are in this space. Yeah.

And especially in Australia. I mean, the amount of time it takes to ship that coffee over here and they feel good when they have the cup because it's mycotoxin free, it's mold free. It's all these little things. It's certified by these guys. These guys love it, but it tastes like absolute shit. I'm not going to lie. Like you're getting, you're getting poor quality coffee from America. You know, you can have poor quality coffee in America that is mold and mycotoxin free. You know, those badges don't really mean too much over there. I guess when it comes to sort of the taste and they bring it over here and it just doesn't taste that fantastic. When in Australia you can get coffee, it's not going to be certified. It's not going to be certified mold and mycotoxin free. Because these guys are getting it from a small, small farm and then they're bringing it into their small roastery and they're just roasting the coffee. You know, they don't need to go out and get these certifications that, that costs a lot of money. They don't need to go and get these lab tests. Big question I've had is what are the lab results for IQ Brew? Have you had IQ Brew tested in a lab to make sure it's mold and mycotoxin free and certified? You know, that costs $40,000. We're a small startup company and an Australian startup company at that. I mean, you see a lot of American startup companies, that startup and three weeks later they have $3 billion in funding. But here in Australia, it's very hard, very, very hard for startup companies. There are a lot of obstacles in your way. Whether it's the 2 megabit a second download speed, you know, the poor into that or the exuberant cost to post something from say Perth to Sydney. Yeah, that really eats into sort of the costs and whatnot. And a lot of these people, yeah, they're importing it. But as long as you find a roaster that has a good relationship with their farmer, I can guarantee you that coffee is going to be a much higher quality. You're going to be supporting a local business, you're going to be supporting that Farmer directly as well. And honestly that to me that's a lot more important. If I had to choose between a certified mold and mycotoxin free coffee and a coffee from a local roaster that was single origin and they directly bought from the farmer, it was a small batch farm, 100%, I'll do that any day of the week. The coffee is going to taste so much better. I've tasted coffee that has tasted like cherries and different fruits because of the small batch and how unique it is. And it just opens your world up in regards to that. And that was something for us too. You know, we weren't going to try and get coffee imported from America just to have certain standards and whatnot in regards to having a certified organic coffee. That's to me after sort of knowing about all this sort of thing, to me doesn't I know a lot of, a lot of customers will look for certified organic things and it might mean the difference between them buying us and buying a competitor. I'm not too concerned about that because I know where our coffee is. Actually. It's single origin Brazil, small batch Brazil. It's brought into Australia, roasted locally in Melbourne and then it's basically freeze dried straight away, which is an interesting thing I want to touch on later on and then sent to our lab in Melbourne where it is blended together with the nootropics in the mushrooms in that sort of perfect way it all kind of works together and all you need to do is add water. I know through my experience in adding all these different nootropics and mushrooms in the coffee, you've got to blend it or it doesn't. Yeah, you get clumps and you get little white patches and, and all these little things. So, you know, it turns this quick coffee that you want into a six minute thing. You've got three different sets of dishes you've got to wash up afterwards and you're doing all this sort of stuff. So yeah, I really feel with IQ Brew we wanted to do it right from the beginning and it has cost a little bit more, which has been a setback for us. It did cost quite a bit just to sort of make sure of some of these things. But I would much rather build it properly and sort of know as opposed to getting really big really quickly and then having all these people asking questions and then me living this life I live of, you know, promoting the health through sort of like all these little hacks and that sort of jazz and then having my products being a subpar quality coffee that you could. You would find in a Nescafe jar.

On the shelves, you know, so, yeah, 100%, dude. And I just wanted to acknowledge for a second what you shared earlier, because that made a lot of sense to me around just going out and supporting a local business, getting a little bit curious around where the coffee is coming from. And you mentioned finding a small. So firstly asking where are they getting the coffee from? Is it a small farm where it's a batch farm. Batch. That's the first kind of point to call. And then checking if you know if. When it was roasted. So the roasting has some importance in. Yeah, yeah.

Six weeks is usually from. From roasting to when you lose flavor in the coffee.

Okay.

So now and then you see that's, you know, by the time you get a coffee from America over here, just because it's certified in some regions, it's probably months and months old. It's probably started to develop mold on it by that time. So, yeah, and with coffee. So I guess if there was a checklist you wanted to do, you want to go to a roaster within your local city of, you know, if you want to go on a trip, go down south, whatever. I know in Western Australia, we have insanely amazing roasters all up and down the coast, which is fantastic. You want to go there and you basically want to find out, yes, they're roasting in house and do they have single origin beans? Is usually the next question. If they're just roasting a bunch of blends, it could be the sign that, you know, they're just getting coffee in because their main customer base might only order flat whites. Whereas if you go into a cafe and you go, do you guys have any single origins? Yes, we've got this, this and this. And you say, oh, when? When was the most previously roasted? They said, we just roasted this one three days ago. It's ready to go. This is our specialty at the moment. Usually those cafes are working directly with farmers. And I will say sometimes, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're buying through other third parties. It's just a matter of going around and exploring. Some cafes will have the tasting cards and if you just ask the question, go, which farm is this from? And if they go straight away, yep, it's from this farm here in Ethiopia. Here, there's tasting card for you and it's got a picture. A lot of cafes have pictures of the farmers. They've got pictures of the owner of the cafe with the farmer, because they go over there and sort of Work directly with them. And you can find these cafes, they're all around the place. You don't just have to go to the cafe that does the Instagrammable pancakes, you know, and settle for that. They go around and explore. There are some amazing cafes in Perth I've been to where I've been able to experience the most unique experience I had was a coffee that it was, I think it was $65 per 250 grams of this coffee because only 50 kilos was made per year. It's such a small batch. And it was just from this farmer who did it as a hobby in Nicaragua basically and was basically importing this coffee, was going, I'm only making X amount. This cafe was able to secure a certain amount and they were able to roast it. And because I had that relationship with them always going in and being like, what are we, you know, what's on this week, guys? You know, which farm, where are we getting it from? They would say, man, have we got a treat for you. It was crazy. It came, this cup came out with this gold plated tasting card and it was like chrome gold, this card. It was like, you know, this coffee has notes of honey, pale sweetness, all these different little things. And you taste the coffee and you go, oh, there's the honey. Oh, hang on now there's cherries coming at me.

Yeah, you're like alluding to one of the greatest pleasures in life for a lot of us Aussies. But I know a lot of people love coffee and haven't experienced these different flavor profiles that are available, right? And it's like a good red wine, right? When you drink a good red wine, you notice the difference. And coffee is this whole nother world where like when you start to dive into it, there's so many different blends and flavors that can come through in these beans. And man, you're getting me excited. I would say, yeah, I would say between coffee, red wine and good olive oil, like there's some things that it's worth seeking out. Good quality stuff, you know what I mean? Hundred percent too short to drink like cheap coffee or cheap wine or shitty olive oil.

100%, man. 100%. And you know, and that's another thing. I mean, Australia, we are so lucky in Australia. We've got the best olive oil in the world. We've got the best red wines in the world. You know, we've got all these amazing things. And now, you know, the coffee might not be grown here, but we've got relationships around the world that allow us to secure some of the best coffee in the world. And I think that's, it's a real beautiful thing. If I could, if I could get anyone to do one thing, if you want to experience this sort of coffee is if, you know, you don't want to have to go on cafe hop to find, find this out, just go onto Google and type in coffee cupping or cafe cupping or roasting cupping in your local area. And what some roasters will do is they'll do certain sessions where they've just roasted a coffee and they'll post a cupping session where you come in and you cup different variations of the beans, different blends, different single origins and they're brewed different ways and you can actually taste the sweetness. And they, this is how they come up with the tasting cards is they basically get a consensus of what can you taste in this coffee? And when you've done something like that, that's when you experience, you go along and you go, it's literally 10 cups of coffee. They're all going to taste the same, but they all taste different. It's crazy. It's definitely an experience. In Perth especially, we've got a lot of that in Perth. I'm not sure about America, I'm assuming I do follow some great cafes over in America and they're very, very small batch and they're also sort of, it looks like they're leading the way in this very niche sort of third wave of coffee that's going on at the moment.

100%. I will give one shout out to a cafe in Toronto where I was going to get my beans. I know I've got quite a few Toronto listeners on here. Del Mello coffee in Toronto, just up from Young and Eglinton station for people in Toronto. Want to check those guys out, make some good quality beans. That was the thing in Toronto. I had to search far and wide for good coffee. So it was, it was one of those things. It wasn't like Australia where we had just these amazing coff is just it's ubiquitous out here. You know, like to find good quality, but in Canada you kind of have to look for it. So thank you for sharing that valuable advice and I'm sure our North American listeners will be getting on board that. But mate, tell me how the lion's mane came into play here and for those who a lot of people still are unaware of, you know, some of these amazing benefits lion's mane has. So how did you first discover lion's mane and why do you think it's such a critical component. This blend.

Yeah, definitely. So lion's mane, I had discovered it through my journey into biohacking. When you listen to a lot of these podcasts and you try and sort of like, what can I do to increase this, get better this and get better that, you start to hear things a number of times. And lion's mane was coming up quite a lot. I wasn't too turned on by the concepts of mushrooms at the time in regards to adding them to things. I was, I was more on the in the taste side of things, you know, whether it tasted good or not. And I started to look into lion's mane because I did hear it quite a lot. I was like, okay, I've got to try it. Where do I get it from? I obtained a organic lion's mane powder and I'm not going to lie, I put it in my coffee once and I never had it ever again. It tasted like literal dirt. It clumped up. I put it in the coffee, I tried mixing it around and it just turned into this clumpy stuff. I'm trying to stab it with the spoon and trying to break it up. And then my coffee, I literally just mixed it with a black coffee and it tasted like, like earth water. And I was like, you know, like with all these benefits I hear about this, it's not worth ruining the enjoyment of my coffee over. So it actually sat in the cupboard for a couple of months. And it was around the time when we had the idea of sort of iq, but I was like, yep, nootropics. I was, well, mushrooms. I had had the four sigmatic mushroom coffee and it was very much the same taste to me in regards to dirt. Water is the best way that I could describe my, my experience with lion's mane and coffee. And when we were sort of researching certain nootropics that went well with coffee. More and more and more I kept on seeing these search results from lion's mane mushroom mix of coffee. And I thought, okay, well let's see if we can sort of alter the taste of it. Get it in there. And then it was only when I started to really look into how I could mix a mushroom of was lion's mane, reishi, turkey tail, chaga, any of these mushrooms with coffee that I started to see insane amounts of research in regards to mushrooms and long term benefits. The studies for lion's mane on our website we've got a list. It must be 30 to 40 links long. And even when putting in those links, the only research I provide on my website for our ingredients is WebMD articles, things that are certified, scientifically backed, papers that have been published and peer reviewed and I just could not stop finding these ones. Online's main. The amount of research that's been conducted on it has just been out of control. So that really solidified to me. I'm going through these benefits in regards to its prevention of Alzheimer's disease, how it supports the growth of new neurons in the brain, all these sort of health benefits which was the idea of like you brew was to create a healthier brain. I don't know if anyone else has this sort of. But with grandparents I've started to see decline in my grandparents with their cognitive health. And they're only really, I say the word only 80 years old because we are capable of living much, much longer. You know, they should have another 40 years left in them really. So to see sort of decline in Alzheimer's, sort of to take its roots there and learning that Alzheimer's actually develops in the brain 30 years before it shows any symptoms, you know, really said to me that this is something that we need to sort of promote as brain health. Later on in the year in September in Alzheimer's awareness Month we'll be donating a portion of all profits to sort of Alzheimer's research. So it's something that when developing IQ brew I just kept on seeing the stuff about Alzheimer's I was like, man, that is, that is fantastic. The studies on Japanese elderly in regards to how it allowed them to score higher on tests which meant that they were learning more, which meant that it was really staving off the effects of Alzheimer's. It really solidified to me. I said we've got to do this. So Lion's main become a non negotiable. And that was still under the impression that it was going to taste like dirt water. I said I've got to make it taste good. So throughout the process of doing samples and whatnot, it took a while but I really think we landed on something fantastic in regards to a balance of having these ingredients that really serve your brain and serve your body, but also tastes great and you're able to smash down first thing in the morning and go, man, that's a good cup. That is a good cup of coffee.

And like it's so amazing to hear about these benefits that are coming from these medicinal mushrooms like to support the growth of new neurons. And I know there's a lot of research around like how it supports like memory retention and how to you Know when you're learning new information, you store memory a lot better, you just notice a shift. There's certain parts of your brain that you can actually feel start to switch on and you kind of communicate better, you're a bit more switched on. So it's just, yeah it's, it's really like you said, a non negotiable thing. When you start to get a taste for what it's like to have these little enhances in your coffee, it takes things to the next level. So mate, I'm curious now for where the business is at and you know, where is the next stage in this? What is the vision here? Like obviously you want to kind of tap into the Perth market and grow but how big do you want to take this?

Yeah, definitely. So really iqbrew, the main part is for us is to continually provide, I know it sounds super cliche but super quality products throughout this whole time. But for me it's whether if this sort of goal of creating a super high quality product keeps me within a local market because I'm spending so much money on this research and development keeps me there, cool. I don't really care as long as I have the best quality product in this area. So for us next, myself, my business partner, a huge interest for us is to continually improve the quality of where we're sourcing our products. So like I said at the beginning how it sort of costs us a little bit to sort of like make sure we're getting good quality products like our lion's mane comes from China where in this is probably the only case where something coming from China is better as opposed to being locally made detail certified location which basically just means it's grown in an area that it's natively grows really. So but even in saying that I will say I don't know the precise origin of it. You know not a lot of these companies do, a lot of companies put out these products and they say you know, it's the greatest, greatest quality. But I'll, I'll say right here now that I'm not, I haven't seen where our lion's mane has grown. I haven't been there personally to inspect the site, I haven't flown to China and seen all this sort of stuff. So for me it will be to sort of take those steps to ensure that we're getting a very high quality product. And in regards to size of the company it's probably better that we don't go too big because a lot of the time when you sort of have this demand of lion's mane. A big thing with lion's mane is because of the demand of its popularity. A lot of it is grown in mycelium grain. You're getting this lion's mane powder that was never actually a mushroom ever in its life. It was just the mycelium, the essence of basically of the mushroom. And it's been grown in oats, in a little room lit with artificial lighting and whatnot, and stay able to basically get the structure of lion's mane. But it's not actually lion's mane. So really just continually sourcing high quality products and then being able to say, you know, I want to be able to have a picture of us on the website, you know, with a lion's mane, with an actual lion's mane mushroom that, you know, we're using in the process of creating the coffee, you know, before is. Is broken down and that sort of happens. So really for me that's, that's a huge thing for me in regards to goals in the business is to just really go out there and ensure the coffee is great. I want to go to the farm where we're getting our coffee wherever we change, provided that ultimately the goal for our coffee is to change to a much smaller farm in Ethiopia is where I get some of my favorite coffee. Just the elevation there and the areas where coffee is grown, it provides a very unique flavor. So for me, I want to be able to directly work with a farmer, bring their coffee in and then go through the process to create our instant coffee product with that coffee. So for a lot of people that are saying, you know, like, show me these lab reports and is your coffee certified and all this sort of jazz is, I think all I can say is just give us, give us the opportunity to get to that point. You can go with a huge company over in the States. You can go with any of these much larger companies that are doing millions and millions in revenue a year and they're able to pay for these certificates. But give us the chance to do it here locally in Australia. Really go out there and create something special that Australia can be proud of as opposed to something that is just mass produced and shipped out to the rest of the world for the sake of being large. So we're adding more products to the product range, but not just going to be coffee. From the beginning, I wanted to have the 1, 2 sort of hit combo. I'm huge on my sleep and the quality, getting quality sleep. So for us, I wanted to have the thing you would have in the AM which is IQ brew the coffee. And then I also want that thing you have in the PM which is to really solidify all the learning that you've achieved throughout the day because you've had the IQ brew. You know, I really want that to be cemented into your brain. So we're developing a hot chocolate drink that is something you're gonna have before bed that will calm you down, you know, if you wanna have it whilst you're doing yoga, whilst you're meditating to really get you in that Zen state and also improve the quality of your sleep. It's got to obviously still follow the mushroom heritage. It'll include Reishi mushroom. Won't go into exactly what it will include just yet as we're still sort of in the phase of testing it out and you know I wear all these trackers, I've got the whoop strap on right now. And we're not just testing it for taste, you know, I'm testing it and then actually looking at the analytics and, and doing that across a various range of people, whether it's using an aura ring, a whoop strap, any version of these analytics and just how they feel in the morning. So yeah, we're going through that but we're going to have a Reishi mushroom based hot chocolate drink. So it's yeah, you want to hit, have something at the night time and yeah from there I think later on down the track and this is just totally something that's still in my head, it hasn't been put into development yet is I just want, I just want a dark chocolate that doesn't have shit in it. I want to have the dark chocolate, the squares of dark chocolate with my, with my red wine that doesn't contain crap. If there is any, someone please send them to me. I haven't found them yet but a lot of the times when I do find these very niche, even locally produced chocolates and they're all about health. I look at it, I'm like wow, these ingredients are great. And I come across sunflower oil. It's really.

I can connect you with some, some, some friends here in Perth who are coming up with like cacao ceremonial grade cacao source from Peru. None of the crap there, there are places you can get it. You just have to say yeah, it's out there. But I know exactly what you mean. You just want it's again it's going back to the quality. We just want good quality ingredients without the shit added to it. And it makes such a Big difference in terms of health and how you feel as well.

And it's very frustrating whether you're at the store and you find it and you're like, wow, sugar free. All these good things. And the companies tried their hardest, but then you look at the ingredients and you see certain things and you go, why? You know, so that's another thing for us is as a. As a bit of a biohacker myself, as someone that is huge on gut health, huge on sleep, huge on all these little things that over the lifetime of a human being can make the huge difference. You know, my ultimate goal is longevity. So, yeah, that's the big thing for us, is to create products that are in line with what we believe and what we do personally, you know, so that for us is the big goal. And yeah, it's great. It's starting to be received where each month where we're kicking the previous month, and it's like we're kicking it out of the ballpark in regards to sort of how big we're growing, which is fantastic. And like I said, it's creating stress for me at work because while I'm here at work, I'm thinking about these issues with these trucks and I've got to be like, hang on, this truck needs that repaired and that truck needs that repaired. But then I also need to send out all these orders. All right, hold on. You know, I'm racing out to the post office on my lunch break, you know, during these sort of growth periods, which is. It's exciting and it's great to see that people are starting to make that shift from their crappy instant coffee that they're getting or even if it's just the pod coffee in the machine. People spend hundreds of dollars on a coffee machine. And I don't know about you, but if you've ever had coffee from some of these machines, a lot of the time it tastes no different to the blend 43 you get out of the glass jar. Instant coffee. It's. Which is interesting. So, yeah, yeah.

And again, man, this is like you said, I'm really, you know, excited to see companies coming out here, small companies who, you know, for people listening in Australia, this is. We want to start supporting these local companies because I know a lot of people are buying the bulletproof and the key on and the four Sigmatic, you know, these big companies outside of Australia, when you know you're. You're doing the work to source the best ingredients and come up with something that's just as good, if not better. So it's really exciting. I'm really just want to acknowledge all the work you're doing, man. It's really amazing to see, to see this starting to come to life. And for people who are perhaps listening from Australia or also people around the world, if they want to learn more about the IQ Brew, the cognitive coffee, and more about what you're up to, where's the best place they can find you online and connect?

So the best place, if you want to find out about IQ Brew, is jump over to iqbrew.com all our studies are listed there. The facts about the product, the breakdown and how much of each ingredient we have, which I. We haven't even really gone over. But the ingredients in IQ Brew, for people who are just like, oh, you've got nootropics, it's probably the most important thing. Yeah. So IQ Brew consists of obviously the coffee. We've got Hoopozyn A and that's with Alpha GPC as well. So hooperzyn A and Alpha gpc, our synergistic sort of blend of nootropics, they work synergistically. Alpha GPC upregulates the production of acetylcholine, which is the learning neurotransmitter. And hupazyanae basically is a cholinase inhibitor and that prevents the breakdown of acetylcholine. So we're increasing levels of acetylcholine and keeping them high for longer, which makes it more available for the brain to use whilst we're out here studying, cramming and studying and learning and doing things throughout the day. It also has obviously the lion's mane, which we've touched on in regards to the benefits, and L theanine, which we've included it to sort of due to the content of nootropics and the caffeine that we've got in it, we wanted to include something L theanine really sort of blunts the spike of caffeine. You're not going to have IQ Brew and start punching the door down and then five minutes later be, you know, napping another coffee. It really helps sustain it. And in regards to the nootropics and having high levels of acetylcholine for a longer period of time, you really want to have that, those high levels of, you know, caffeine sustained for a longer period of time as well, so you're more active. You can actually utilize these things because you're not going to feel high levels of acetylcholine in your brain. You could be Pretty asleep and have high levels. So, yeah, so that's it. We've got caffeine, lion's mane, Alpha gpc, hubrazion A and the L Theanine. So, yeah, jump over to the website iqbrew.com au also give us a follow on Instagram, which is just iqbrew. And, yeah, that's. That's pretty much it. In regards to the online thing, we've just done a little promotion where we gave away. We were giving away free coffee. We basically said, look, I'll be sending you guys a free sachet. Jump onto the website and grab a sachet. And I originally allocated 200 sachets to sort of give away and I thought that would last all week. It went in 12 hours. Oh, shit. It was out of control, people. There was. My phone was just. I had to turn notifications off because for 12 hours straight up, just ding, ding, ding. All these people. I think that just says a lot about Australia, to be honest. We love free shit.

Definitely. I think everyone does, mate. Especially when it's free coffee.

Fuck.

Everyone's gonna get around that 100%.

So, yeah, there'll be a lot of people this week who are gonna be jacked up on their coffee. So that's good. I'm glad I've been able to do that.

But, yeah, so it's just online right now. Just people can just order online. It's not in any stores as of yet.

Yeah, so we've got one store in Canberra which is Oxygen Nutrition for those. For literally anyone outside of Australia. They don't know that Canberra is actually the capital of Australia. It's not Sydney. So Canberra is currently the only place where we have a store that's wholesaling. We've got a few more that have been interested. So sort of working. We're right in that phase right now. Sort of like working out the finer details in regards to providing. I really want to roll out locally to Perth stores, ideally, because I can actually go into the store, I can create a relationship with the person who owns the store and we can work together. I know there's a lot of stores in Perth that are very focused around holistic health, so it'd be fantastic to sort of work with them and have local brands working together, as opposed to them just dealing through email with someone on the other side of the country. And that's the only relationship they have with them. So.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So, yeah, man, really exciting to see this start to build in Perth and across Australia. And for anyone who was able to join and was a coffee lover and got some insights around how to discover and find the right coffee man. I'm excited for them to learn more about IQ Brew and connect with you if they have any other questions. You're also on Instagram as well, right? Ognitive coffee.

Is that right, Cubrew?

Cool.

Yeah, so that's the, that's the Instagram handle there. So iqbrew, we're going to be putting a lot more educational content out there in regards to to coffee in our coffee and just coffee in general to sort of like help people make better decisions.

So yeah, amazing. Yeah, I highly invite people to check you guys out on Instagram. The content's amazing already. So I'm excited to see what's coming. But Matty, I just want to say thanks so much for coming on here. It's really been a pleasure chatting about some one of my passions and really I'm sure people have taken a ton of value from this as well. So thanks again buddy.

100% buddy. Thanks for your time and look forward to dealing you some coffee later on. Catch you mate. Bye.

Hey, there we have it guys. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and yeah, look, if you made it this far, cool. Here's my voice again in your ear and I'm gonna make one more request for you is go ahead and subscribe and leave a comment on the podcast page because really putting a lot of focus and attention on getting this podcast out to more people because I know what I'm putting in here can serve and bring value to people and it would mean a lot if you got value from this to leave some feedback and subscribe. So you stay up to date with what's coming up and as always follow my Instagram and love hearing from you. It's eight shifters until the next episode, guys. Thank you so much and I appreciate you.

Foreign.