Biohack Your Brain, Body, and Business with Dave Asprey | Capability Amplifier

Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high.

Performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. In this episode, you'll meet Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof Coffee Upgrade Labs, host of the top rated bulletproof radio show, Bulletproof Media, and author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including the Bulletproof Diet, Headstrong, Game Changers, and multiple cookbooks, and featured in dozens of magazines, including Men's Health. Dave Asprey is well known for coining the phrase biohacking. That's the state of high performance where you take control of and improve your biochemistry, your body and your mind so they work in unison, helping you to execute at levels far beyond what you'd expect without burning out, getting sick, or allowing stress to control your decisions. Dave used his techniques to increase his IQ 20 points, dropped 100 pounds without counting calories or exercise, and. And he's literally a human guinea pig who recently endured the most extensive stem cell treatment ever done on a person at one time in his quest to live to be 180 years old. And I actually saw him the next day, so I can vouch for that. What I love about Dave is he is all heart. And in this interview, you're going to learn about how he thinks and makes decisions and what the biggest dangers are that he's currently facing that he sees for you as well, and where he sees opportunities for in the world of medicine and personal growth and how you can model what he does in your life and business. And full disclosure, I am an investor in Bulletproof and Upgrade Labs and serve as an advisor to Dave. He's also been a member of Strategic Coach. Now, I interviewed Dave at his home in Victoria, British Columbia, with his wife, Lana, two kids, a dog, five sheep, and a spiritual guru. So make sure you check out the photo of me in a cloud of liquid nitrogen on my Instagram feed, yecenigs. It was completely insane. So, without further ado, let's dive into the interview with the always interesting and intriguing Dave Asprey.

I wanted to talk about some of your unique abilities and how you think and how you do what you do. So what I wanted to begin with is how do you create intrigue? How do you think about intrigue? Because you've been creating products now for a long time, very successfully, and you have a cult brand.

This is going to sound funny. I have never thought about intrigue. That's not how I do it. What I think about is what can I do to educate and inform and be worth listening to and it turns out that one of the characteristics of that something that maybe Jay Abraham explains best, who's a dear friend, is about just being noteworthy. So if you want people to learn about anti aging, I've run an anti aging nonprofit for almost 20 years. And you know how many people pay attention to that under age 50? None. Because, well, what do you care about when you're 23?

Well, probably procreating is one of them.

And making money.

Yes. It's career, friends, and sex. Let's talk about a health blog. You know how many of those there are? More than anyone can ever use. You know how many people really wake up in the morning and say, I want to be healthy? Only the really sick people. Everyone else, I'd like to wake up, I'd like to feel great. I'd like to maybe procreate, and I'd like to have a career and take care of my family and do all the other parts of being human. So what's going on is it's a failure to communicate. So intrigue is just effective communication. And it's. Instead of saying, what do I want to communicate? Say, what's in it for you? And when I'm successful, when I do my best work, that connects with the most people, and it's simply saying, what's in it for them? And what's in it for them isn't what's in it for me? They're not me, they're them. And if I can just empathize, use my mirror neurons, I can just get into their mind and I can tell them something that's of service to them in a language they can use. They think it's intriguing. I think sometimes I'm like, do I really have to say it that way? Okay, good.

Well, right now we're chatting, actually, at your barn here in Victoria, British Columbia. Looking out. It's beautiful. I'd like to ask you what you see as some dangers that are present that you are trying to solve right now. And that can be from an intellectual perspective, from a health perspective, both in your life and also what you're trying to do with or for the business.

It's interesting. We have this idea of thrivers, and this is based on a lot of market research. These are people who figured out they can become, as you would call them, super beings or superhumans or people who realize, you know, I can look the way I want to look, I can feel the way I want to feel. I have achieved some degree of control over my state. There's all sorts of paths to get there. Most of them I call in the world of biohacking. And I wasn't always one of those. And I became one of those. There's a much larger group of people who I would call strivers. There are people who are working on it. They realize it might be possible they aren't there, but they're on a path. And then there's a much, much, much larger group of people that you could call the strugglers. I don't think I can get there. I don't think there's a path. And I know, either I know or I don't know that things aren't so good. Like when I weighed 300 pounds, I definitely. Maybe in the back of my mind or something, by the time I was 30 or late 20s or something, I figured it out. But in my late teens, when I had arthritis, I was clearly overweight. I had all these things going on. You asked me, I would have been, oh, no, I'm fine. I'm strong. Because you don't even see it.

So you're like at a struggler phase. You're unconscious. Striver means you're consciously incompetent, perhaps. And super being is where you are consciously competent. You're doing the.

That's a great breakdown. So the trick for bulletproof, we did a press release. We announced, we went to 20,000 stores. This, by definition, means. Okay, how do we communicate this bulletproof language? Our mission vision is we create products that radically improve people's lives so that they can tap into the unlimited power of being human. If you're in a place where I don't think I have the power, much less unlimited power of being human, and I don't think it's possible to radically improve my life. How do I get someone like that to look at a bottle of bulletproof cold brew or one of our collagen protein bars on the shelf, Pick it up. Not have heard of the brand, not have heard of me, not have read a book, not have listened to bulletproof radio. None of that. Pick it up and say, there's something in this for me that's special. And that is a different problem than we solved before, but it's one that I think that we've created enough of a movement around the brand. It's not just Hollywood and Silicon Valley and New York bankers. Even though bulletproof started with people like that, it's people everywhere, all the states, so many countries where people talk about it. And you see that guy in the office who lost 50 pounds in three or four months and smiled the whole time. They tend to be evangelical, just like I am about what I do. So I think we're reaching that population. But that's the big question for this year is what's the very best language to help someone who is where I used to be?

So it really comes down to its messaging. In your case, 20,000 stores, which is retail or mainstream, and being able to span struggler, striver, and the super beings are the superhumans.

There you go.

So that brings us to the next question. Which are the opportunities? And through your lens right now, without giving away some gigantic trade secrets, of course, what do you see as being some opportunities that are new and emerging that you're super excited about? Like what's lighting you up right now and getting you super excited?

One of the things that has me really excited is the fact that I've become a curator of the best stuff in biohacking. So it's given me this opportunity to say, look, I am not in a position to manufacture every single thing that I think is amazing or that even has evidence behind it. So Bulletproof radio now gets 2 million downloads or more a month. And it provides the opportunity to talk to all these experts and also to talk about new technologies. And then I have the opportunity to roll them out at Upgrade Labs. This is something we spun out from Bulletproof. We're recording in a bulletproof lab. It's a million dollar facility with all sorts of gear that astronauts and Navy SEALs and neuroscientists and people use to improve performance that I put in place to get control of my own biology. And it's something that we have in Santa Monica at the Beverly Hilton, and the ability to now curate, identify the technologies, share them on the air. Even if they're nothing that we sell at Upgrade Labs, they're nothing that we do at Bulletproof, but they're useful and impactful and empowering for people. That makes me really happy because I get to see it all. It gives me the best view. People bring me the latest things. So I sit in that bird's eye, eagle's eye, whatever you want to call that thing, where I get to see the whole landscape, the lay of the land, and I get to try it and see what works.

It's called the eagle's nest.

Eagle's nest. There you go.

Messing with you.

But that ability just to have the visibility and to be able to sense what's in the world that's coming in the world of anti aging, I've stated publicly, you might have seen the Article on men's health. Yeah, I'm going to live to at least 180. I think it's actually doable and to be able to be in that position as a leader and just tell people, hey, old age looks like not tubes and monitors and wheelchairs and forgetting your own name. Old age looks like feeling good, being able to move around under your own power and having so much energy and developed wisdom that you can serve. I mean, let's take Dan Sullivan, your dear friend, both of us. Dan is what it looks like to age. You see him, he wakes up every morning, he's excited. He has friends of all ages and he's giving back. And the more time he's on the earth, the more good stuff he can give back in less time. We have this lack of what I call village elders and still have the energy and the mental and physical ability to stand up and say I want to share and more of those. That's going to make the world a better place. That's one of the things I'm most excited about.

So if you're going to pick one thing right now that stands out for this year that you want to solve, overcome, accomplish and again, that could be small. It's a Dave thing or something, a bring to market that pops out.

What stands out if it's a Dave thing? I'm going to start small there. The book marketing world is pretty jacked up right now. There are so many people throwing books up on Amazon and I use the word throwing up very consciously there because you can dictate a book in about six hours. It's just a book that's not worth people's time to read it. I look at recording an episode of Bulletproof Radio or writing a book as an exercise in roi. Can I create a return on investment for a listener or a reader much higher than what they did? That means I usually spend eight hours for a one hour show or I might spend thousands of hours for a book. But my last book, Game Changers, USA Today bestseller, sold something like 40,000 copies. So far the highest rated book of all of my books, almost exclusively five star reviews. And it was one of the hardest ones to write also and one that's changed a lot of lives. It's been hard to sell and I've been looking at book launch processes, old ones that don't work anymore, affiliate marketing ones like that. And I think for my next book on anti aging that I've got this sorted out where we need to go back and use the book not to Connect to our own community. But my own community is going to probably read my books because they've gotten value from the previous ones. But I want a book that's going to help new people and the people I have now. So changing my thinking around the book launch process to reach people I've never met means going back to advertising, just doing it with excellence.

That's good. I like that. It's very smart. So let's talk a little bit about strengths. And specifically I told you this before we started recording through my lens, I see some of your unique abilities and strengths is you're really good at spotting trends, being able to package, name and connect with an audience Right now. What are the strengths that you're going to be honing that you're focused on enhancing yourself with? So again, if you're going to look at ways to amplify your super beingness or your own capabilities, what are you focused on right now? And obviously we just talked about book marketing specifically. But what are some skills that you're really looking at enhancing?

There are two that I've relied on a lot. One of them is event correlation. I'm better at pattern recognition in the domains that I care about than most people. And I don't know if it's probably a mental brain thing. The other one is what I'm going to call feeling language and brands, where when I am naming a product or a company or whatever, there's a visceral felt sense that happens before you can think about it. And that's what drives my naming process. So those two things have been very beneficial for me. And that also every word I choose, whether it's a title or even in a sentence, runs through that little filter. So I'm only triggering people if I want to. And those have gotten me so far. But when I look at what am I working on this year, it's actually more of the stuff that Dan would talk about, which is around leadership. Because I am founder and CEO of Bulletproof and we're now a sizable company. We've raised $68 million in venture capital in three rounds. I'm into the 20,000 stores and just growing like a weed. We also have Upgrade Labs where I'm chairman and founder. We've got location at the Beverly Hilton and. And I also have this 40 years of Zen, a neurofeedback program that's been around for several years where there's a couple neuroscientists, people go in for a brain upgrade, a five day intensive thing. Many of our Friends have done it and certainly it's changed my life. But I don't have time. I don't run these companies. I started them, I defined them like I'm the energy behind them. But I don't meet with the teams every week. It's not even possible. And I have Homebiotic, the mold spray company, and, and TrueDark, the company that makes glasses for jet lag. These are things that were innovations that did not exist, that I could not buy. And I always start things I can't buy. But there is no sane way that I can be a husband, a father, a podcaster, New York Times best selling author, CEO of a venture backed company. Oh, and CEO of these other handful of companies. Your head would explode. So then you get into what Tony Robbins and Richard Branson and people like that who have their hands in dozens. I think Tony said something like 5,000 companies he's involved in or something. I don't know if that number's the right one. But the deal is how do I scale leadership? And the biggest thing I'm working on now is how do I deal with this incredible pressure from people who want a piece of my time? Hey, I just want a cup of coffee. Can we just have a quick phone call? The answer is, even if I really want to, the answer is probably no, because I'm going to go play with my kids. I mean, even this show, my son Alan's waiting to play ping pong with me as soon as we're done. So there's this weird energy that happens where people say, well, I wanted a piece of Dave. Whether they're employees or portfolio companies or friends or potential investors or whatever else, people can get resentful when they don't get the piece of view they want. Then they think, oh, he thinks he's better than me. That's actually how it works. It's like other priorities. Your priorities are not mine. And just working on balancing that. How do you lead effectively in very small amounts of time? If you figure that one, let me know.

All right, I love that. That's really good. And I am going to go backwards a little bit to what you just talked about, which was pattern recognition. And if you look back in time as far as what habit or belief has helped you become, is this something that you feel you were innately born with or you evolved or developed? I'm really curious about that because it's something I see very commonly amongst really good startup entrepreneurs.

Pattern recognition for me probably comes because my grandmother is an advanced degree in nuclear engineering and all aunts and knuckles are weird science types, so it may be a genetic brain thing. And also I had the symptoms of Asperger's as a kid. Certainly some neurological chaos that I've since sorted through with all the neurofeedback and bulletproof diet and biohacking and all that, but the core mind that just notices, hey, this is tied to this. And you realize no one else has noticed that. And a lot of the stuff around sleep hacking that you'll about read.