New Neuroscience + Mental Health Breakthrough Helps People Heal

The true pandemic is mental health for probably over 50% of people in America. If half the world is sick, then we need something that will serve the whole, you know.

I discovered Mendy. My life substantially became better using this technology. I'd had a bad breakup with an ex girlfriend, and I met her a few weeks into. Into using Mendi, and it wasn't that far. It was like three weeks into using Mendy, and she was like, why are you so nice? You're, like, so happy and so positive. You're high energy, but it's like a calm energy. And then I realized it's, you know, putting more oxygenated blood flow into my prefrontal cortex. Could be the. The difference between me losing my. Because the guy behind me honks at me and me just being completely cool as a cucumber. So if it makes people 1, 2, 3% better, why are we not doing it? Well.

Rocked my freaking world was seeing NASA involved.

Yeah.

How did that happen? Your life journey to get here has been a long journey, like Libya, Costa Rica. Like, you've had the gamut to get here. And I really appreciate you just as a man, as a businessman. Like, I've never met someone like you. You're literally the Costa Rican James Bond.

I appreciate you, brother. Yes.

And welcome to the podcast, man. It's going to be a cool one.

Thank you for having me. I, you know, we. We. We met for that dinner a few weeks ago. That was fantastic. And you introduced me some amazing people, and I was. I couldn't wait to get back and spend some more time with you.

Yeah, likewise, dude. And you've been enjoying Austin. You've been here for almost a month or so, right?

I've been in Austin for. Yeah, for almost a month. I love it. It's great. Food's great. People are so nice. Everything is just. I even saw the bats under the bridge and all that stuff. It's. I've really taken it in. I've really.

There's, like, a million bats. What?

I've.

I haven't seen it yet.

Oh, you got to do it.

You're, like, more of a tourist in Austin than I am. I've been here a couple years.

I'm, like, a week away from being a local.

Oh, my God. All right, well, this is a good jumping off point because, you know, when I came across you, it was actually one of our team members, Lauren. She. She found the Mendy technology, which we're going to talk about. I think it's going to absol. Revolutionize wellness Tech. I don't know if you know this, but back in the day, maybe five years ago, I used to be on stage at ces, and I was interviewing people and showcasing wellness tech. And I'd be chatting backstage with these founders, and I could feel from them, I'm like, your company is kind of like this egoic veil. It's not really about the tech. It's not about you caring about people. You just want to, like, have a company so you can be in the limelight on a stage. I get zero of that essence from you. Like, give people just a super brief, because there's a lot to unpack. Dude. Give people a super brief story of how the Costa Rican James Bond investor, like, you know, philanthropist, like, world change mover, TEDx speaker, multiple serial investor, like, you've lived so much life in such a short amount of time. Give people maybe just the two or three highlights, and then we'll. We'll go into there of how you became the CEO of Mendy, and also just, like, how you manage to live your life in a way where almost seems to me like a movie.

I. I appreciate everything that you said. I don't think that that is. I look at it very, very differently. So to me, I am. I'm a Costa Rican that barely graduated high school. I had a. A drug overdose at age 16, was in a coma. I'm. I'm like the ultimate up. Like, I up so much. And I have been always next to people that have not only tolerated my fuckups, but that have given me a 10th chance and that have helped me. And I'm just surrounded by smart, beautifully sensitive, generous, caring people. And I. I think it got to the point where I had no choice but to get it right at some point. And I'm older than you are.

Wait, how old are you?

43. Almost 44. Okay.

I'll be 43 this year.

So we're. Yeah, we're fairly close.

Come on.

Same generation. Okay. But for me, it's like when. When you talk about it like that, and I. And I'm grateful for it, but the way that I look at it is just like, I'm just, you know, I'm just a kid that grew up in a, you know, kind of like not the best childhood. Not the. You know, my parents didn't know too much. You know, never. Never really intended to confront them on it. Never intend to. I'm just, like, at peace with it. It's cool. I found my way. But, you know, I was, you know, the smallest guy in School, you know, I. The smallest kid in school, which is. Which kind of led to me becoming kind of like the always the, you know, the fittest guy and the, you know, it's kind of like I kind of shaped my life. I kind of built everything with my own hands and. But in the end, it was just a jungle cat from Costa Rica. And the truth is, I'm not even from Costa Rica, and I'm the most Costa Rican guy, because my parents were, you know, they fled Libya in the late 70s. And I was born in Costa Rica in the early 80s, in 1979, but I landed in Costa Rica in 1980, in the early 80s. And my strength was that I never really had a home. Like, I never really fit in anywhere. So when you tell me about Austin and all this stuff, I'm like, well, because to me, it really doesn't matter where I am. It's going to be great. When I was in Libya, that was a war zone. And to me, it was. I was completely fine, you know, and I lived in. In Asia. I used to live in Hong Kong, and that was. That was amazing. And that was perfect. And I live in Sweden. I've been based in Sweden for nine years now. That's home. That's great. Like, so to me, it's like, I don't really have a connection to anything because my background has kind of made me understand that I'm a jungle cat. And wherever I land, I'm going to eat. Wherever I land, I'm going to survive. Like, it's. It's not a problem for me if it's.

I get that from you. 2010, actually. 2010, you're a teacher in Libya, and then you're at your TEDx talk, bridging the Libyan gender gap through physical fitness. Carthage, you also remind me of a different archetype, the Dos Equis, the most interesting man in the world, where he's, like, on the boat with a machine gun and smoking cigars, skiing. And this, again, isn't to pump up your ego. My audience knows I speak the truth. It's a resonance I feel with you. So I'm definitely in the understanding that you've got something. I don't exactly know what it is. And we're going to flush it out on this podcast, and we're also going to connect it to mental health and this incredible training, which, by the way, you guys, right now, we're going to be talking about this later on. This is JoshTrent.com Mendi M E N D I this Device is awesome. It's like kind of a gamified mental health visualization where we can increase blood flow to the pfc, the prefrontal cortex, which, by the way, that's what shuts down during times of war, during times of stress. How prevalent is that in America and across the world right now? But, dude, to pull the E brake, 2010, you're in Libya, the civil war was 2011, the Libyan civil war.

So I was there late 2010, and it was early 2011. So I was there kind of like, wrong place, wrong time.

Things were heating up.

I was there to do a commercial transaction. So I thought it was like a quick in and out and go back to Costa Rica. And then I stayed because I. So I have a very strong sense of right and wrong. Like, for me, it's like I'm obsessive about things. I'm. I have a lot of flaws that come from basically being very black and white with these things. And. But I mean, some of the advantages that come with it is that I have the power of conviction, right. I also have the power of stupidity. Right. Like, I don't weigh risk, reward very well, which gets me into trouble, but it's also made me probably more successful than I should have been. Right? Just based on the fact that I can just say, fuck it, it's going to work out, you know, And I think that things are easy. And I think you now, you know me well enough where you know that I actually believe it. Like, it's just easy. You know, when we met, we had a quick chat and it was like, all right, you're having dinner this week, whatever. I was like, I'll take a flight. I'm here in Nozada. I'm in Costa Rica. And I'll. I'll just land on a flight I came in for. I was in. I was in Austin for like 15 hours.

Yeah.

And I came and I. I had dinner with you and with your friends, who are fantastic. And to me, it's that easy. It's like it's. Life is more. It's just. It's about just making decisions instead of overthinking. So I'm actually very different to all the people around me. Like, a lot of the people around me are thinkers. I told you when I was having dinner with you that I appreciate the things that you have so much. The way that you can kind of like land and soften a message, that's something that's. That is not in my nature. Right. But the way that you can kind of simplify things that to me are fluffy and that things that to me are a little like as, you know, as a Costa Rican man, like maybe. Woo, woo. Yeah. And you kind of land them in a way that it just, just lands on my lap and I'm like, okay, this makes sense to me. Like, I can feel that, like that's part of your magic, right? And that's why I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of what you have and, and that's the beauty, right? Having people that are so different around you. That's what makes it all possible. But when I was in Libya, I was basically just an idiot trying to make a commercial transaction. You know, I'm trying to get some money and, and then, you know, there's that energy, there's this. People are talking about revolution and better lives and, and I'm like, you know, yeah, everybody deserves to. Like, this is something that I can back and this is something that I believe in. So again, my sense of stupidity made me decide to stay and, and that led to a lot of adventures.

You're a teacher. Like, it's funny because I did some digging on you, some fun digging. And in one media interview you said I was kind of a shit student, you know, self proclaimed ADD later because of maybe what happened in Libya with the impact of war that increased your add. But at some point, like in your core, you recognize that you were a teacher and you don't have to be good in academia to truly teach people that feel the lesson from. You don't always have to have your perfect words.

This is what I was fucking telling you. Like, this is what you do. Like you just explained what I was going to say, but way better. Well, by saying, and that's what that.

Say in your own words though, because this is the magic of like, you're a unique soul. They'll never be another Mohawk. There'll never be another Josh. Like, we're here man. We're going to die one day. It's fucking special. It's really special that we get to be here. I don't say that lightly. Like death is a good reminder to live. And so there is like a divine unique spark in you that allows you to navigate the James Bond experience and come from essentially not nothing, but come from not necessarily a silver spoon in your mouth. It's not like you were born to a dynamically wealthy family. Like you've built this construct of reality around money and educating yourself and soft and hard skills and having people around you, much like many Presidents have had where they'd push a button and the expert would come in, but they were still the leader.

Like, that's.

That's kind of the vibe that I get from you. So. So what is it about your spark that makes you a teacher, but not the traditional teacher? Like, not somebody in the classroom scripting from a book. Like, what is it about you that that allows you to teach and lead by example, especially when it comes to mendy, like running a big company.

Well, so for me, words always mattered a lot. And it was really, like, the only thing that I cared about. Like, for example, like, I. I really liked, like, English. I never studied, I never prepared. Even as a teacher, I really didn't prepare much. I just really cared. And there was stuff that I knew, Like, I know grammar, for example, and when you talk about teaching. So I was teaching, this is after the war, and I was involved in a lot of the stuff there. But afterwards what happened was I set up this school where I would. I did these deals with the national oil corporation, so there was a lot of money. So I would teach adults grammar so that they could go to the UK and they would get their eyelets test. But with the money that we were making, I would teach orphans. So we had, like, kids that we were teaching with the money that we were making from the adults. And it was just. It was just like a passion thing. Like, I mean, I never made a dime. I lost money doing that. And it was. I was. I was probably the happiest that I ever was up until now, because I feel I'm happier now. And obviously there wasn't a lot of peace in it, but there was a lot of reward. But, you know, under those conditions, it's very hard to find peace, which is something that I have now. But, yeah, I mean, to be honest, I. I don't think I'm qualified to do anything. So just like, I loved being a teacher and. And I'm very close to a lot of my students still, and they're very grateful for what I did, and I'm grateful to them. Like, I don't feel that I ever was qualified to teach. Just like I don't feel like I'm qualified to be the CEO of a company that, you know, a neurotech company. You know, it's just that there's many smarter people around me that make it, you know, that actually need that. Those one or two good things about me, which include conviction and fearlessness.

It's an interesting concept, isn't it? Like, someone is qualified Like, I know in your world it's both science and it's also emotional intelligence, which is like not always perfectly quantified. It's hard to quantify emotional intelligence, but science and like hard data, I think that's super easy for all of us in this intellectual bath that we're swimming in where everybody's got the top down approach to explain why you should do something or why you should know this person. Like there is some kind of an existential energy that, that you and I share. Like Zach Bush calls it the redox system, where you know, in your enteric nervous system and in all the micro muscles in your face. Like we're checking in with one another right now. We checked in when we met, we checked in when you got off the plane. Like we're, we're assessing each other out. Like, is this person trustworthy?

Right.

Do they mean what they say? Do they have good character? Are they somebody that I could introduce to my family? Like, these are ancient things that are experiencing in our systems at all times. But what's really fascinating is like in your world, that doesn't always come to the top of conversation. In your world of mendy and especially tech in general, Silicon Valley is full of those people that I was telling you backstage that they might have a huge belly and they're a health CEO. It's like there's a disconnect. Dude, can you, can you talk about that disconnect in wellness technology? Because a lot of people that run companies, I feel like, I feel like.

It'S more of an ego projection in.

Silicon Valley than it is actually truly wanting to help people. Like really wanting to help people. To expand on that, for me, I.

Do everything kind of very instinctively.

And.

It, it really all comes from the heart. Like I, I honestly have just. Which is funny because I'm, I'm mostly deaf out of my right ear, but I'm really good at listening to myself. Which is funny for somebody that's partially deaf. Right? But I, I have good instincts. I've just honed them. Like, you know, we come from the jungle. It's like I really feel very connected to our animals to like the jungle cats. Like for a jaguar in Costa Rica to survive, I mean, they've got to be very aware of their environments, they've got to be able to feel things, they've got to be able to smell things. So I, I look at things in a very different way. I'm not a big reader. Thank you for giving me this book. I'm very excited about it this shout.

Out to Waylon Myers.

This is something I will read. And I appreciate it. I appreciate it and I appreciate you a lot. But me, it's like I've always been a very, very instinctive person that will only kind of like go by my own rules, which has given me a lot of problems obviously during life, but it's also brought me a lot of rewards. It's brought me a lot of, and, and some of those negative traits that come with somebody that has maybe an excess of conviction and an excess of courage is that I've always been a very, for example, a very aggressive person. And you know, there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of flaws that come with being, you know, a certain way, right? There's the good and the bad. And the reason why I even ended up, for example, accepting this job at Mendy because I don't know if you know this, but I was retired before Mendy, so I retired in 2019 and then they found me. And it wasn't until I started using it and we'll get into it later, but it wasn't until I saw changes in my own life that it became a mission for me. It's kind of like, you know, like you see a lot of times people that have like a certain condition or that will have like a family member develop a condition or pass or something, that's when they get super passionate about a cause. For me, it's very much the ultimate expression of that to the point where I can't even really get, you know, into I can't half ass things. So if something doesn't make sense to me, like that's why I'll train all my friends and I'll get them in shape and stuff. Because to me it's like, come on man, it, it makes sense. And sometimes I need to, you know, bang my hand on the table for years and years and years, you know, such as the case with, you know, the CEO of Spotify who's now, he lifts more than I do and he kicks my ass and he's shit talking me probably as we speak, you know, and he's one of the best human beings I know. But it was just like, dude, you're so smart and you're so much better than me at everything. You're just so fucking competent. I can't, I don't have 2% of your capacity except in this realm. So what I would love is for you to conquer my realm as well. Because that's my thing. I'm the guy that can do 40 pull ups, like understand, I'm the guy with the six pack in my 40s, I'm going to be 70, I'm going to have a fucking six pack and I'm going to be able to kick just about anybody's ass, right? You know, it's like I want my friends to be like that. But at the same time, if those friends can be strong and they can be, you know, confident, but at the same time they're really caring, good human beings that raise their, you know, their daughters and their sons in the right way and can make the world better and can impact millions of people, which I'm fortunate to have people around me that impact millions and millions of people to the point where I believe that I can do it with Mendy, right? And it's just like, it's just such a beautiful thing. So I'm just grateful. Like, it's just gratitude. Like the thing that you talk about, like the, all these compliments that you give me, which to me like I appreciate them, but to me they're, you know, they don't make that much sense in the end. It's just this jungle cat that's very grateful. Like I'm just grateful to be here on Lake Travis talking to you and learning from you and absorbing some of it. And I'm excited to likewise, likewise.

And you know, you can perceive them as compliments because they are, but really like when a compliment is authentic, it lands a different way.

Like we know I feel it like that's why I'm so open to you and that's why I, you know, we've had the, the even though it's a very.

That's why you're here relationship.

That's why you know, that's why you're here.

That's why I've introduced the device to a few friends. That's why I've been using the device. Not because it's some new cool device, but because you told me about it, right? Because we have an actual relationship. All sales and business and growth and everything that everyone wants never comes from a fucking sales page. It always comes from like a trusted relationship. Look at, look at what's happening on Instagram where you have many of the guys that, you know like these huge like 10 million, 20 million followers musicians and they post one thing and it's not because they post it that it gets the sales. It's because of all their life story that brought them to be that influential where people will trust what they're saying. Because they've earned it in a way, they've really earned it. And so you've earned it. And it's interesting because if you didn't speak English until the sixth grade and you were in Costa Rica and then you went to Libya and then Sweden and all these travels along the way, you had to develop this dynamic sense of, I am confident, I know who I am, I see my flaws.

I.

Emotional intelligence. And it's funny because we were at dinner, I think you said something like, oh, I'm the least emotionally intelligent person at the table. And it's such a paradox because by you saying that, it actually makes you at the same level as everyone else.

Because when you introspect, that's a beautiful thing to say. I appreciate it.

Yeah. When you introspect, that opens the door for more intelligence to come in. It's the people going back to my initial question, like the CEOs, that are blasting out their ego projection and not really caring about the wellness tech. Those are the people that never take the self inquiry. You know, they don't. They're not aware of who they are. They just think that they're this holographic manifestation of their ego that has seven zeros attached to their bank account. You see that a lot, I'm sure. Can you. Can you share with us the true essence of the dichotomy inside of Silicon Valley from. From what you've seen in investing in your relationships? What is that dichotomy of ego manifestation versus true service for people?

I think that the people that the people that are more accomplished and accomplished doesn't really mean net worth, are always the most generous and the most open and the kindest. It's those people and they, by the way, these people could have $10 billion or a $10 million debt, like it doesn't matter. The ones that are just still in that state of competition. Yeah, those are. You know what, you know what my best friend calls those lifestyle CEOs, where they see that company as an extension of them. Right. It's just a thing, you know, it's just that logo is part of their ego. Right. I don't think I've ever had that. And I, and I honestly never even wanted to be the CEO of a company because I just knew it was a lot of work. So I've kind of engineered a job and a position where I can be the CEO without having to do the CEO work just because I have such an amazing team. I think you've spoken to a few of them and they're just, yeah, they're all smarter than I am and they're like way smarter than I am. They're all just such good, kind people and we just treat each other with respect. I don't think any of them sees me as like their boss. Like, it's, that's just not how it is. Right. I don't, I don't manage people. I don't, I kind of believe like you do what's right and I do what's right and it should be fine. Like we shouldn't even. Like you understand, like it's just like, and, and you just try to. I think that's so simple. It's just not very prevalent in that business world. Right. And I look at it even with me, like when I was broke, the whole thing was I need to make money. I need to make money to pay my bills.

When were you broke? When were you broke?

Oh, recently. I mean, I, I joke that, that I'm not just self made. I'm not, you know, I'm very recently made. I mean I got back from Libya and I got my job at Fish Brain, which is a fishing app, which I, I scaled. And, and that was my first exit. This is in 2015, right. That's when I sold it. So I was broke up until then. And the funny thing is I made quite a bit of money and I blew it immediately. And I, and, and I blew, I, I'm a big spender and, and you.

Blow it on food and traveling or.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Airplanes.

No regrets, man.

You give a 15 year old a Ferrari, they're probably going to crash it.

It's, it's, it's exactly.

Yeah.

And, but for me it was kind of like I did it with no fear. Like I just burned through it with no fear. And then it's just like kind of like an animal figuring out how to use tools. Right? Because this is, I, I've always grown up in Costa Rica. It's like you have a salary, you do this, you have a better salary, you have. And then I learned a lot of the stuff. I've had some really good mentors, like some people that have really cared about me, that have given me stuff and that I have, you know, some of their advice I've managed to implement well for my own life. And then after that I had an. I went into my second project and that exit was way bigger and I actually blew through that money as well. It was about four times as much. There was a lot of money. Like it's, it's it's quite a bit of money, right? Everything's a matter of perspective, right? But to me, it was a gigantic amount of money, and I just blew it. And there was, like, no regrets and there was, like, no fear. And I was like. Because I kind of, like, I got to the confidence of like, oh, wow, now I'm not just paying my bills. Now I can have this kind of money. So now this became possible. So it's almost like, level unlocked. You don't get to go back to level one. You're already at level four. So that's kind of how I looked at it then the second time. And that's why in 2016, I got to the point where it's so easy to do what I do, because I don't know how to write code. I don't know much about product. I'm, like a tech guy, and now I'm like, a neuroscience guy. And, like, it's like, I know nothing about hardware or software or jack shit. Like, I know nothing. I'm literally the least qualified person. But what I have is I have the skill set of, you know, kind of like a hybrid between a club promoter with values and a fighter. So just put that, like, if you combine kind of like that, you know, that conviction with those. Kind of like, with my superpower, which is that, you know, people kind of, like, respond to somebody that is strong and somebody. We were talking, telling the story about shoving somebody's face down a urinal. Like, you know, it's things I'm embarrassed of, but things that. That. That have, you know, but they're happened.

They're also respected in this world where, you know, if you look at some of the work from Kelly Brogan or a lot of people, Jordan Peterson, people in the modern masculine space that are really seeing the modern masculine as strong, as having the ability to be violent when necessary.

Love.

Love protects. If my son was getting attacked, you better believe I would kill someone if they were trying to hurt him.

I would go even further than that. And I would say that if you are not at your strongest when that moment arrives, fuck you. Because you're a bad father. Like, you understand, like, it's your responsibility to be just the biggest, scariest fucking version of yourself, but also to be the kindest version of yourself. Those in parallel, yes. That's how we fucking stop, you know, women in Afghanistan from being locked up and beaten every day. And that's how we stop a lot of the problems in the world, right? So for me, it's like, it's very. I think big. And I've got this delusion that, you know, if we are strong but we are kind, there literally can't be problems. It's almost like that's, that's kind of like the, the. Yeah, to me, that's, that's kind of like the, the perspective if we were.

All stronger physically stronger, which then equates and then equates to mental strength.

We even had a little bit of a conversation about money, right? About how powerful it is. Like, I'm not. I'm a lot more useful to you if I have resource. Like, for example, like, even to you. Let's talk about us. You know, Mohan, Josh, you know, I'm a lot more useful to you with my resources, with my contacts, with those things that if I was just like this nice, random guy that's absolutely, you know, without any of these things. Right. But long story short is I just realized that I could monetize my personality and that there's way smarter people that are better at other things, building these incredible products. And it's no different to how I landed on Mendy. And what I did after my second exit, after blowing that money is I said, look, it requires such a small amount of effort for me to be myself. Like, I told you, any club promoter could do what I do probably better than I do. Like you. You just, if you know how to do that and how to navigate things and how to move, but with no sketchiness. Like, I do everything very transparently. Like, I'm very, very, very black and white on my asks. I'm very black. And there's never a hidden agenda with me. And that's why I have the relationships with people that I have. And my relationships, they last lifetimes. What I did is I kind of plugged that in everything that I was accruing, you know, whether it's contacts, what I like to call goodwill, equity, all these things. And I'm like, I could really scale myself and instead of scaling one startup at a time and making X amount of money, I could do it a hundred startups at a time.

I'm sure somebody is watching right now and they're like, wow, I want some of that.

It's so easy.

I want. But see, you say that, though, and this is what I think is really interesting about your journey. Like your trajectory you came from. Your parents were middle class, Were they poor? Like, what were your parents? What do they do for occupations?

So, I mean, they, they, they had to flee Libya so they didn't get to leave with Much. Right. So my, my mom actually comes from a fairly wealthy family. Like where it's like they grew up wealthy but they weren't wealthy. It's one of those families that has money and bickers about it and all this stuff. And, and my, and my dad was actually from a super poor family, right. From the old town in Tripoli. And it was, there's these shared houses that our Jewish family in Libya shared with my Libyan family. So that it was the Arab family and the Jewish family together in Medina Kadima, which would be the old town in, in Libya. And it was the, the Ben Sophia family, Ben Sulfia family and the Khalfun family. I don't think I've ever said this to, to anybody, but that's, that's the story. And my dad literally grew up eating bread with watermelon every day. That was lunch for them because they're so poor. So it's like lunch was bread with watermelon. I grew up with my dad telling me that. So I was very grateful for what we had. But we never grew up rich, right? I mean we were probably middle class. And I didn't get anything from, you know, from my parents. It's not like I inherited anything. It's not like I got, you know, I got money and then I got started investing. Right. I had to do it by myself. I do have an issue, as I say that with the term self made because I truly believe that unless you live in the jungle with no other humans around you, you can't truly be self made. So I think that I am self made in the sense of how people look at the word self made. As in I didn't inherit.

Yeah.

As in my, my parents didn't hand down money.

I think that's a good use of the term.

But I've had a lot of people that have lent me an arm and a leg and a shoulder throughout the way. And they're people I'm going to be grateful to forever. And many of those debts I can't repay. And these people are family to me, all of them. And there's so many of them.

So then at its core, what drives you? Because it's not the money. Like once you reach. And I know about the Maslow hierarchy at the bottom, there's like the safety and security, then there's shelter and food, then there's procreation, then there's, then you can be at levels of service if you look at human evolution and psychology. But what's interesting is at some point, 2015, 20, 16, 2017. You got to this place where money wasn't really an issue. You weren't at the bottom of the hierarchy anymore. You had risen to the top where you could actually be of service. Some people choose to go into hedonism at that point. I'm sure you've seen this with like the movie stars and the musicians and even the CEOs, like, they kind of turn, dude to the dark side. They go to the dark side. I don't know if you have watched Star Wars.

Yeah.

You're a Star wars fan.

I'm not a Star Wars. Okay, all right, well, I get a lot of. For that and the tech, that's fine. It's not cool to say.

I know it's probably very popular there. So. Whether or not you've seen Star wars or not, we all know that once you have more choices, you have to have more discipline. Otherwise the agency of choice can become hedonistic. You can, you can choose the darkness and, you know, whether it be like, sex or drugs or rock and roll, like, all that stuff.

And you could argue I'm a bit hedonistic. You were just talking about, I have a candy room at home. I have a tequila room at home, like, with. With hundreds of bottles of tequila. Right?

Like, but see, for me, like, the reason why that's so cool is because you're not consumed by it.

You don't self control.

You have self control. You've. You've trained that. So at the core of the question is, like, what drives you now? I'm sure in the beginning it was like a hunger for success. And maybe you have your own words for it, but something different. You have a different fuel substrate that drives you now, especially with Mendy, like, and your own ADHD and what happened in Libya and all, all the war veterans and the people that are benefiting from the tech. Like, it's something different now, right? What is it?

Well, so, I mean, it has a lot to do with Mendy, and maybe to explain it, we kind of need to go get into the story of how I got into Mendy. But, you know, I got really bad PTSD after the war in Libya and the gunfire and explosions, I'd have so many nightmares. Like, it was a daily thing. Like, I mean, the nightmares are just crippling. Like, I just couldn't sleep. I would literally, I'd be lying there and I'd wake up and I'd hear any noise or somebody, you know, lying next to me would make a noise or would move and I I would, like, you'd wake up, like, reaching for your gun. Like, you'd wake up, like. And the thing with me, with Mendy was, was a few things. And. And the first thing that happened to me when I met them and they found me. I didn't find them, right? Because again, the founders of this company are way smarter than I am. And they. One of them actually had met me when I was with Fish Brain, and he's like, this Costa Rican guy is what I need so that he can take this thing and talk about it to the world. Right?

Because they didn't want a lot of public acknowledgment.

No. So. So both these guys are very anonymous, you won't hear about.

Right.

And, you know, Swedes, you know, and. And for me, it's not like I wanted acknowledgment. I kind of like being in the background. It's. It's nicer being in the background. You. The perks without the, you know, without the downside. But this guy had pitched me and he had written me. He's like, oh, we built this thing. That's incredible. And. And I eventually, you know, said to him, he was messaging me on. On Facebook messenger, and eventually I was like, you've got 15 minutes. I'm at. We work in Stockholm. I'm meeting another company. And. And he comes and he's like, oh. He brings me an older version of Mendy, and he's like, oh, you know, this thing is called neurofeedback, and this fixes your depression and your lack of focus and your ADHD and your insomnia and your migraines and your emotional regulation and your ptsd. And. And I said to him, it sounds like I. I tried it, and it really does until you understand how the brain works. Right? Which clearly I've never. Until up until Mendy, I've never had an interest in neuroscience. That's why I say I'm very unqualified for this job. I was a science student. I. My interest in this field came because of the improvements in myself, right? And that's when, you know, I got involved with. With Mendy before even trying the product. I did one session and I invested. I invested just because they told me that they had half. They had soft money from the eu, from the European Union and from other institutions, the Swedish Innovation Agency and all that. And the way I saw it is it's a clean cap table where there's two founders that own the whole thing. So as a business investment, I was like, if 10% of what this kid is saying is true. This could be a great business. Like it was a complete business. You know, if 10 is true, this is huge.

That's honest.

This is amazing. And I said it to him when I invested. But within three, like, I started using it in the nightmares. Literally went from a few times, like every day, like waking up every single day to all of a sudden I'm almost not having nightmares at all. And I'm like, shit. And then the, the breaking point I've spoken about this was I'd had a bad breakup with an ex girlfriend and, and I met her a few weeks into. Into using Mendy and it wasn't that far. It was like three weeks into using Mendy and she was like, why are you so nice? You're like so happy and so positive and like, like it's, you're high energy. But it's like, it's a, it's like a calm energy. And I'm like, should I be really offended? Because I've heard this from like 10 people, right?

Like, who were you before?

Yeah, exactly.

What kind of an were you before?

Kind of an was I before? And. And then I realized it's, you know, putting more oxygenated blood flow into my prefrontal cortex could be the, the difference between me, you know, losing my. Because the guy behind me honks at me and me just being completely, you know, cool as a cucumber. So it's. But that's, that's the whole thing. Like, I just kind of like landed like Mr. Magood. I've just kind of like luckily landed in the right place with, with the right people and they happen to be more successful and smarter and kinder. And. And when you talk about what my motivation is like at this point, I'm very like black and white. I'm very like disciplined. I've been fasting for decades. I only eat at night. You know that.

You're an Omad guy. One meal a day.

I do like a four hour window. So I'll have several meals and I'll, I'll have these feasts. It's kind of like every day is Ramadan kind of for me. So I. It. But it's like every day and that's why I have the candy room and all this stuff. And I. But I kind of like that whole celebration of we're gonna eat. Like to me, like there is a ceremony to eating that gets wasted on standing in line and buying a sandwich. To me it's, it's offensive to what that does to our bodies. And even though I, you know, a lot of people would disagree with me because I'll eat, you know, ice cream, you know, and be like, oh, what the are you doing? You're killing yourself. You're eating ice cream every day. I'm like, well, I want to eat ice cream every day. It makes me happy. I enjoy it. One of my many companies in Sweden was the biggest blood testing company in northern Europe. So I know that I'm not dying. So it's like it's a combination of my happiest life plus decisions that make me kind of like, not destroy myself while living my happiest life. And it kind of leads to, yes, I want to enjoy as much as possible, but without destroying the planet, without hurting you. I want to make, you know, whatever this amount of money, but not at Josh's expense. And I'd rather make $300,000 with Josh and my other buddy than to make $20 million by myself. Like, to me it's just like. It's kind of like the math doesn't make sense with me, but everything makes sense to me. It's easy. Like, to me it's just like, it's there. Like, don't even question it. Like, it's. It's obvious. It's easy. And my mission would be to help 100 million people. I truly believe that that single mom with four kids, one of them has adhd, one of them has panic attacks, or her stressed out of her mind because she can barely pay rent. I think that person should be afforded every single thing that the healthc care systems have failed with, and that person should be able to get any sort of treatment that can make her life and the kids lives better.

Well, hold on. If you do that, then the system won't function anymore. The brokenness of the sick care system won't actually be able to thrive. It'll truly be a preventative healthcare system. So be careful. I mean, it's amazing, right? But, like, this narrative is very different because really what we're talking about is using the good side of tech instead of pills.

Yeah.

So we have this wellness technology world where it's like, we're not going to get away from tech Moha. It's actually coming stronger now with AI. So we have to be able to embrace the wave of tech and use the good side of it, because otherwise the bad side's going to cut us. We're just unaware of it. So really it's like the old model. This is what's most exciting about wellness Tech in general. The old model was like come to the doctor who's unhealthy himself and he's going to tell you what pills you should take, what medications you should be on. Heaven forbid it would be functional. There would be something where they could actually tap into themselves and use the intelligent wisdom that they have always had. They just forgot. That's really what mirrors of mindfulness through tech can do. It becomes this mirror where we can go oh, like whether it's an Oura ring or Mendi or any device, it's like some kind of external locus of control to remind us about ourselves innately from a nature based standpoint. That's the most exciting thing about this.

I, I agree. I 100 agree and I think you know that I am, you know I am as far from that crystals and like that to me it's like I'm not that guy and you know that. And I'm like a more like, like an old fashioned things need to be real stuff. And I believe in science and I, and I, it's important, you know. But I'll tell you, I think that science is up and that scientists do science for other scientists. It's not communicated for that single mom of four kids. It's not communicated for the Costa Rican kid that didn't give a about science in school. Honestly like it needs to be tangible to us, it needs to connect with us because you know I discovered Mendy. I, I, my life substantially became better using this technology at age 40 and I have that thing all the time where if this has existed since, for 70 years, why is it that I found out about it in Sweden in the first world while I'm a multi millionaire, what chance does a girl, you know, what chance does an 11 year old in Bangladesh fucking have? That person's like what chance does somebody like. So for me it's about I truly believe that, that we need to get to a point where we build these things. That's why I never talk about competition. That's why I'm not a salesy person. It's because I truly don't care about the money. We measure like our KPI is measured like lives impacted. So somebody that tells you, you know my daughter doesn't have panic attacks anymore or like a former soldier telling me like a veteran, a 65 year old telling me you know what, like I, I can sleep. And they're like usually there's tears attached to these things and they're always thanking me which to me is actually like embarrassing because I haven't built. I did not build this. You know, Rikard and Sammy built this. Rickard is just exponentially smarter than I'm ever going to be. But we were meant to be together because I have what he doesn't have. Even if what he has is what built this. He needed somebody to help him reach that person that needed to hear it. And for me, it's. That's kind of like the way I look at it. It's about a lifetime value thing, right? Like, I'm not anti drugs. I'm not anti pills. I'm not. You and I have spoken about, like, even, like, things about ayahuasca and stuff like that. Like, it's not for me. I had. I didn't, you know, I had a drug overdose in 1996 to the point where I don't mess with anything because it's not even out of fear. It's just because I feel I am such an. In such a good place that there isn't an urge for me to find something better or to understand anything else. I truly believe, perhaps in a delusional way that I understand life and that I'm exactly how I need to be right now. If I. If I was searching for an answer, and perhaps I would need to be smarter in order to be searching for an answer, but I'm just not. And to me, that's easy. It's wonderful. Like, I'm doing exactly what I'm.

Two questions.

Yeah.

I remember when you talked about your dad, the watermelon and the bread, and then you had said, standing in line for a sandwich is disrespectful, essentially. Is it because you came from knowing that watermelon and bread. As to why you treat meals like a ceremony, is that. Let's go there just for a second, before we get into the science of mendi.

I. I think our reward system was always food related.

When you say our reward, you mean you and your families or just humans?

Me, mine and my sisters.

Okay.

My sister Sophie, who is one of my heroes. I love her. I have a big sister and I have a little brother. And my sister is literally. I mean, the funny thing is the people that I admire in life, like the. The top people that I really respect and admire, they're all women. They're all very strong women with traits that we would associate with masculinity. And I just think that when we were little, I didn't grow up eating bread and watermelon. That was my dad. So I was. We. We had access to just about Everything. We didn't grow up rich. You know, I remember growing up in a. You know, we had a small apartment, immigrant parents who had an accent, obviously. So there's a lot of people that can connect to that. So you always feel a little bit like an outsider. Even though I didn't have it, but because I was in Costa Rica my whole life, and I'm in Costa Rica, everybody knows me as a Costa Rican. Right. Even though biologically I'm not, I'm still more attached to that ground than I am to anything else. And my mom has Greek and Georgian roots, and. But they're. My parents are from Libya. But, yeah, I remember as a little kid, I would sit down and I would watch Transformers and kind of like, we didn't do much as a family. My dad. My dad. All right, now I'm getting super personal. But my dad would just leave for years at a time, and so he'd have a fight with my mom. And my mom is an unbelievably aggressive person. I love my mom. I'm going to go see her next week. I'm going to Costa Rica to see her for a few days. And I love my mom, but very, very, very aggressive person. My dad was kind of like a different aggression. He was in kind of like a easily irritable person, but he was, like, kind. He was just mean. It's very hard to explain, and it's something that I. Maybe I need to think about more. And I'd. I'd kind of like to sit down with you privately and just kind of have you pull it out of me. But I remember my dad used to have all these adventures, except this guy would show up every so often, right? Because they would get in these huge fights, and my mom would just lose her. And just literally, it was. My mom was very aggressive, and he would just leave, right? Perhaps so he wouldn't get murdered. Like, I. I kind of say it jokingly, but not necessarily. And. And then my mom was never a very active person. So a lot of my childhood was me sitting in front of a TV watching Transformers or. Which is where my obsession with Optimus prime comes and all that. And. And I would literally just be eating snacks. And I remember as a little kid saying, like, when I grow up, I'm gonna have enough money that I can eat whatever I want every single day.

Huh?

And it was. It's. It's just such. So the candy room makes a lot of sense, you know, because I'm still that kid sitting in front of the tv watching Transformers. It's just that I have a life where if Optimus prime was a real person, he'd probably be sitting on my couch with me having a tequila. And, you know, I have the resources to do whatever I want, and this is how I choose to stay in shape and to stay strong and to enjoy that every day so that if it's my last meal, I didn't waste it on a sandwich from fucking dude.

Thank you for sharing. That hits me. I. I feel that I was raised on welfare. Like, we're talking government cheese kick cereal. My. My mom and dad did the abso. The best they could, and I'm super grateful for them.

How is your mom grateful?

She's a lot better, thank you. Yeah. And. And so I'm like, okay, if. If we have a mess, we grow up in these situations as children where it can be a mess. Like, it sounded chaotic. It was definitely chaotic in my upbringing. And probably 90%, you know, God bless the 10%, but 90% of people that are watching this or listening to this, they can just relate to what you just said in some way, because it is. And if you look at Peter Levine's work or Bessel Van der Kolk or anybody in trauma and somatics and understanding of human psychology and somatic experiencing, we literally are the projection of what transpired for us when we're children. But we have to be able to be an adult and father ourselves and essentially to mother ourselves so that our childhood doesn't fucking own us. Because when our childhood owns us, that's when PFC completely turns off. And this leads me to my second question. I'm so glad we explored that, man. I'm so glad we explored the roots of, like, what it is you're actually.

I've never said any of that ever to anybody. It's.

I mean, it gave me chills just to hear it. And it connected with my own story. Growing up in La Mesa and, like, having times where we couldn't eat food that we wanted to eat, like, that's. That was real for us. And so I think the contrast, the vacuum that was created for you where you didn't necessarily receive. And God bless your mom and dad, right? You didn't receive the things that that young Moha needed. It's not about blaming your mom and dad because that takes away our agency, Right? It's about knowing, okay, how can I be of service from my wound now? Not that I'm ignoring my wound, not that I'm bypassing it, but, like, it doesn't make sense for me to bathe in it and sit in the wound. I may as well use that as a fuel source to serve from. And so that's what I really. This is why I love podcasting, because even though we've had dinner and even though we've spent time together, this is really the meat. This is really the connection point that I think we share. It's like when you come from something that you didn't receive that you needed, you have two choices. You can use that as an excuse to be mediocre and not serve others, or you can say, wow, that hurt me so bad. I know it's hurting other people. And when we're hurt, we are totally in our ancient brain. Like, our PFC shuts down. We're in fight or flight. The science on this is freaking fascinating. We probably do an entire podcast about the science of the prefrontal cortex. I went very deep in my research on this, and I found something that isn't even on your site. And so maybe you guys can use it for the site. But it was this Yale medical school study, and it was chronic exposure to uncontrollable stress causes loss of spine and dendrites in the pfc. And they did this massive study on how when people are triggered or in stress or in wartime. I know that Mendy essentially was started with the idea of victims of war and trauma, people struggling with ptsd, anxiety, adhd, like, that was its origin. But then I'm sure the more you guys got into it, you realize, wow, this isn't about just the hard science of big trauma. This is also helpful for people that, like, have regular trauma.

Yeah, like the.

The lowercase T trauma, the neglect, the stress, the screaming kids, all that stuff. Share with us about those two types of trauma. And actually, even in your own life.

You know, healing, using the device to get more blood to the pfc. This is the.

The ultimate crux of, I think, why.

Mendy could change the game for mental health.

There's a lot of pills and lots.

Of other devices out there, but they don't really attack the core component. And that is this unit that gives us agency to connect and feel that literally, dude, turns off when we're stressed.

Exactly.

Go into that.

Controlling that is everything. Right. It's. It's. I heard recently that the ultimate superpower that a human can have. I don't remember exactly where I heard it, but was emotional regulation. Yeah, right. It's. It's that ability to stop yourself from shoving somebody's face into a urinal like that, that is actually more strength than actually doing it. Right. Like, there's something, there's another level of strength above being able to be the guy that does that. That makes you the guy that has the ability to do it, but doesn't.

That's right.

Because, you know, so for me, I've had to learn these things in my adult life. It's funny because I tell you, my, my mission is to have. To enable Mendy being able to help 100 million people. That's my job. It's unrelated to money. It's. It's a goal that is just kind of like my life's mission now. And then the next thing that I've set out for myself, which we'll get into, like the more personal side is, you know, the reason why I'm 43 and I haven't had kids yet is because I've always felt a lot of it comes from the trauma from just not having parents that knew very well. Like, you know, my dad who passed recently and who I, I loved a lot. You know, he used to, he used to joke like, I don't even know what schools you guys are in or what. And it was a very real thing. It's just like a very macho Libyan guy thing. It's like, I don't do that. Like, what. And he'd like, joke about like men that change diapers and stuff. And it's like I've kind of, like, I've kind of gotten myself to the point now where I feel that I am worthy of being a parent. Like I would be better than them. So it's like it, it hasn't been about resources for a while. Right. But to me, it's just been about now I feel that I have the capacity to raise a kid better than I was raised because I don't want them to have to figure out the, that I figured out and go through an overdose and a war and 50 other thousand things. Right. And obviously my prefrontal cortex being able to fight that amygdala, you know, is, is kind of like what has made me be able to arrive at this because I had enough money to have kids at, you know, a few years ago before Mendy.

Yeah.

You know, so it's, it's very, very powerful. The prefrontal cortex controls everything. To use like a physical analogy, if you have a torn bicep and I start screaming at you that you need to do pull ups, you might. My intentions are good. You might understand that. Yeah, pull ups are going to Be good for me. You just don't have the ability to do it. So for me, Mendy is more about having the ability to do things. I went through therapy and I. I had this incredible, incredible therapist. Her name is Brigitte Flensburg. She's unbelievable. I love this woman. And she helped me a lot to understand why I did a lot of the up things I did and why I reacted in the wrong way and why I would lose my. If somebody would roll their eyes anywhere in my vicinity and stuff, and all sorts of stuff, and little Moha and all this. But it didn't give me the ability to control my behavior. So for me, that is kind of like what Mendy brings. It's a very physical thing. It's a very tangible thing. It's. Yes, it's like telling an alcoholic, drinking is bad for you. If the alcoholic is lying on the street and they see that I'm staying at the Four Seasons, the alcoholic probably wishes they were staying at the Four Seasons, not sleeping on the street in their own piss. The problem is they don't have the ability to stop drinking and go get their shit together. And to me, that combination of things, that's why I don't believe that there's one thing that fixes anything. It's the combination of things that make the whole.

One of the things that fascinates me about the neuroplasticity element is that our brain is literally plastic. Like, that thing trips me out when I think about, like, if you heat up plastic, you can mold it and shape it, and our brain is basically warm plastic. People forget people. It's so easy to forget about that. And I'm like, wow. So if I take a device, like, I used to use the Muse for a long time, and then I stopped using it because Muse was kind of like my training wheels to meditate. And so I've actually been sharing with people like Mendy is both hardware and software.

Right?

Because you know what's interesting is that when you get this real time feedback. So for y' all that don't know what put it on the screen right now, you can see there's a handheld device. You're getting this video game element from the visual cortex, which goes into your brain, which then utilizes the blood flow to the pfc. And what's really cool about this is like, I've actually used this thing. I've shared it with buddies, and it feels good. So that's the biggest report card that I could say for anyone else is like, when I'm focused On one thing, whether it's like a gamified little nodule on a screen, I'm not thinking about other shit. And when I'm not thinking about anything else, it becomes really, in a way, like an active meditation, where instead of me just sitting and going, okay, I'm going to focus on letting go. Which is really hard for people. Which is sometimes why I say, you know, if you want to breathe, come with us@ Breathwork IO, because Breathwork is for people that can't meditate. But I'm really curious how we can.

Combine the specific breathing practices with the Mendi, because essentially. And you please share with this blood flow increase and the different. I think it's microscopy that goes in and actually measures the blood volume increasing in the pfc, which, again, during times of stress, shuts off. Could we also use the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system to spike even more blood to the pfc? And then how can we see that unfolding in times of stress, when the kids are screaming, when the dude cuts me off in traffic, when I'm upset with my partner, whatever it is, I can see this literally heating and molding the plastic in the brain. And that's what's most exciting. Like to me if, you know, you talked about the 80s. My mom's manic bipolar. So if she had this, if I had this, I'm the only one in my family that hasn't taken SSRIs. Knock on wood. Like, hopefully I'll never have to. But it's in our epigenetic expression that my family has to depend on certain things because genetically we're wired in this way. And I think people can relate to this. So the short question for my long story is, how is this going to help us? Like, how is this truly going to help us in the brain, mold that plastic so then when it counts, when we're under the stress, that we can respond in a loving way.

Well, it's about having control. For example, it's about being able to flex your bicep at will. Right. The problem is that. And there's a study that's being done in Sweden on violent offenders, on teenage criminals. Like the worst of the worst, kind of like the. The rough, rough, rough. And the one thing they all have in common is that they have a lack of oxygenated, you know, blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. They don't have enough oxygen in the prefrontal cortex. So, yeah, being able to control that, being able to tap into these things at once, Will, is an Incredible, powerful skill to have. It's a life changing. It literally is a different life. The person that can turn that off and walk away from a problem and the person that can't, they have very, very different outcomes and very different lives. Right. Yeah. That's the difference between, you know, being awarded and celebrated for achievements versus ending up in prison. Like, it's literally like that, that you're talking about breath work, you're talking about physical exercise, you're talking about all these things. They all add up. Right. But what I will tell you, and you mentioned Muse, for example, which I think is great, you know, it's like they're all.

It's a good starter.

It's. It's. It's. Yeah, I. I've never. People get very surprised that I've never talked shit about any company out there. I'm not an expert in the field. There's a lot of people that know a lot more. You know, the people that I have interviews with and people that. You guys all know this, this space so much better. I'm not like a hardcore biohacker in that I'm the guy that knows all the wearables and knows all the technologies. I'm not that huge of a reader. But what I will tell you is that, to me, the closest thing to Mendy would be the squat. Like the squat rack or the bench press, or you could even say the treadmill. It's one of those things where by itself, it doesn't do anything. It's just there and you need to do the work. So basically, as opposed to, for example, Muse or any of these, you know, these products which can help you feel better, they can get you into a meditative state. There. There is a benefit to all these things. And I'm. I'm a big fan of anybody that's building anything that's going to help you have a better day and have a better life. But what we do is like, we've just created a barbell and we've said, if you fucking lift this weight every single day, or if you run every single day, over time, you will be stronger. And being stronger is the difference between saying, baby, please sit down, and beating the. Out of your kids, which us, with the way that we grew up, I think we know that very, very well. And I think that might be kind of like part of my obsession with this, because, you know, at some point it's like, yeah, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the ship beaten out of me as a kid, you know, if somebody could have Snapped their fingers and increased, you know, the blood. The oxygenated blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the person beating me.

Yeah.

You know, so it's. It's one of those things where it's. To me, I see things in a very basic way, like, in a very. Almost like the way that a caveman would see things, but it's. You know, be a caveman with access to the smartest people and the best people. When I took the job as CEO of Mendy, I never wanted the job. I. Like, honestly, I thought it was a joke when they asked me. When Rickard and Sammy asked me to take the CEO job, I had actually proposed that we offer the job to one of the highest people up at Twitter, and one of the smartest people, huge Silicon Valley guy, friend of mine, and. And they said, no, we don't want him. And this guy's like, a huge name, and I'm just like the Costa Rican guy. And they come over to my house and I have a Tequila room. It's like, there's no fucking comparison in my mind, right? And they said to me, oh, my guys, you need, like. You need, like, that tech guy or probably one of the people that you're talking about, or you need, like, some neuroscientists. Like, somebody with, like, a.

They tend to be boring, though.

And. No, but you know what they said to me? What they said to me is, yeah, but you believe in us, and that's really all we need. Like, just take the fucking job and we'll figure it out. And I remember I picked up the phone and I called two people way smarter and two of the kindest human beings I know, two of the best fucking people. That there were more of these people in the world, there would not be so much injustice. The world would be a fair place. And these people are Marcus Exal, who's the chairman of my board, who used to be my boss back in the day, and Daniel Leck, the CEO of Spotify. And. And they both said to me, sure, you can be the CEO of a neurotech company. And I'm like, but how does that even fucking make sense? Like, you guys do understand I don't even have a fucking college degree, right? Like, it's like, how does that make sense? And what Daniel said to me really stuck with me. And he said, to be a good CEO, you need three things. You need to listen, and you need to learn. Don't be an. Don't make this about you and your ego. Just learn. Surround yourself by smart People and learn from them, listen to them. Surround yourself by the experts. Number two, he said, you need to care. Like, literally, that's your task. Like, part of your job is to care. Yeah, care about your fucking team. Start with the team. Start with Alex, the guys, Louise, the people from my team that you speak to, care about them, care about the users, care about the investors. Just care. And the third thing that you need to do is communicate. And he's like, you know how to fucking talk. I don't see how this could be a problem. And I was like, wow, it's that simple to be a CEO, because it's such a big title. And I understand that there's some incredible CEOs out there that do all these incredible things and have all these checklists. I have none, but I have conviction, and I can do those three things. And now, over the next year, we want to tell people about what we're doing with Mendy. And I will move on when the next person wants to come in. Maybe they're listening and want to run this company and get it so that we can help those hundred million people. So that we can help people in the, you know, that don't have the resources to buy Amendi. And we can make, you know, we can kind of strong arm governments and healthcare institutions into giving people whatever it is that they need so that they can be better. Yeah. Then they should reach out.

Yeah. Because people are stuck in the matrix. Let's be honest. I'm not here to do conspiracy tinfoil hat theory. Although sometimes my guests and I go there. But I don't think we need to. If you really want to talk about where people truly are. People are caught in looping systems of the mind. And I know because I've been there. Who am I to do this? Who am I to make this much money? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Worthiness. Worthiness. Worthiness. Worthiness. And all of that's happening, man. When my PFC shut down, and I remember I was doing research for the Breathe program and I was listening to. His name is Michael. Huge famous guy. I'm blanking on his name right now. And Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan. And he wrote that book, how to Change youe Mind. And he was speaking here in Austin at a church, and he was talking about, like, platitudes. Platitudes are things that we hear. You know, love is all there is. You know, look within yourself. The answers are there. The reason that these platitudes are kind of poo pooed. And bastardized on social media is because they're so fucking true. And if we would just live our lives by these platitudes, then life would be so much easier. But we're trapped. We're caught in the Matrix. The PFC shut down. The amygdala is fully illuminated. We're not, we're not in our bodies. We think we're, we don't listen, we.

Don'T trust, we think we're, we think.

We'Re in our minds, but we're actually not in our minds either. We're in this construct, this fabrication of.

What Neo put his hands up and the bullets fell for in Matrix.

And that is I'm in fear. I'm not loved, I'm not worthy.

Money is scarce.

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Expect the worst to happen. That was a ticker tape that played for me for, for decades before I finally just.

Am I going to live or am I going to die in 2015?

Like, what's going to happen? And so what's really exciting here, and.

I have this written down, is that.

In 2016, Dr. Andrew Hill I went to Peak Brain LA in Culver City and I sat down and he said, hey, we did this scan with you and it was like five, $10,000 at the time, which I think the real time neurofeedback, it's still pretty expensive clinically, it's real expensive. It's like 20 to 30 to 50 times more cost than the Mendy, which.

Is like, Mindy, you can go out.

And have drinks for a weekend and do something stupid or you can buy.

The Mendy and actually increase your emotional intelligence. How did you guys get all that expensive tech? Squeeze it down and get into something that you literally. And I did this in 2016, 5 to $10,000 at peak brain L. A to get that real time feedback. How did you do it? How do you put all that tech, clinical grade tech, into something that people can use with their smartphone like that? That just blows me away.

Right, well, what happened is that, you know, Sammy, one of the two founders of Mendy, he was so involved in this world and he managed to slip on a banana peel and in through the door walks Rickard Ekloff, who's one of the smartest people in the world, who happens to have been building these touch screens for like Ericsson and a company called Neonode. And like I think he was doing like for Apple and for Samsung and all this. And he was an expert like in light technology and all this stuff. And he literally looks at these machines and he's like I could actually do this and that and I could build this better and I could build it for a fraction of the cost. And that's how it happened. So basically it just. Everything in Costa Rica we say in la vida. No I casually solve into. Which means that in life there are no coincidences. Everything is meant to be. Me being here, everything. So Rickard walking in that day for a consultation because he had, you know, because he wanted to get neurofeedback sessions. Obviously it was no coincidence. Right. He was meant to come in and build this thing that would eventually help people. People. And it's already by the way, we have 25000 people using Mendy. So it's not like it's. There's, I mean it's out there, there's a lot of people. Yeah, of course we, we want to get it into the hands of more people and distribute everywhere and all that but it's. We're starting and we're moving fast. Right. There is a world where everybody has access. I also believe in a world where we don't people, we don't over promise, we don't say buy this, it's gonna fix your depression. Like that's for me it's about not preying on the desperation of people. And that's been kind of like the thing from the beginning. It's. Rickard has built the best possible thing that we could build. And the beauty of it is that the software we can keep updating all the time forever. So that's never, that's a living organism that's always going to get better and if you update every, you know, a couple of weeks it'll be it. There'll be more stuff and there until we built kind of like no different to what these platforms that you've been talking about have built. You know, the, whatever the, the metas and the, and the Spotify's of the world. You know the product gets, you could argue those some products get better, some products get worse. But for us the idea is that they get better. Right. And that there's more engaging content and there's more things that will guide you and will hold your hand because you know it's boring to get on the treadmill and run but you fucking do it because you have to do it it right. And you're never truly done. As long as you're alive, you're never truly done right. It's. I have a six pack. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop training because I've kind of like achieved the ultimate level and I have a six pack. No, it means I got to keep training for the rest of my life. And I'm fat and I need to lose weight means I need to train for the rest of my life. And I have diabetes means I need to train for the rest of my life. And I am skinny means I need to train for the like. Like there is no end goal. There's only improvement. We're either becoming stronger and better or we're becoming worse. And for me, transparency and kind of like collective knowledge, like if we collaborate with all these companies, like how cool is that? You know, like how cool is that? Like using Mendy will impact your scores. For example, with the OURA ring and positively. So we. Well, because having a better prefrontal cortex is going to make it easier for you to go to sleep and to sleep better. How beautiful is that? If everybody starts collaborating, they're not looking like if people have 300 they put into this or they put into that, people have a thousand. How do we get more money out of this? It's a lifetime value thing. It's about like we just don't care about these things. We're craving the moment where people don't have to pay for Mendy at least. That's kind of like a reflection of my own values into the form of Costa Costa Rican CEO of a neurotech company in Sweden, which makes no fucking sense.

Well, the tide is shifting and it's shifting, I would say pretty damn quick because the pharmacological intervention, it's not working. Like if it was working and if it had some long tail sustainable piece to it. And granted there's certain situations where western med and pharmacology, it's important. I'm not going to delete an entire industry because it has specificity. But overall, like you and I both know and from this lifetime value, if.

I give you a pill and you become un.

Ill. That's right.

Then you stop buying from me.

From 600 people that have sat here and thousands more out there with many different degrees after their names, everyone is saying the same thing with different words. And that is if we can get the human organism back to homeostasis the without having this chemical intervention, whether it be through tech or being in nature or doing 40 pull ups like they all work. But we've got to go there. We've got to have the trust and the courage to actually go there. And to me there's no greater sign than anecdotally. First, how does it make me feel? But then secondly, it's also the people that you're collaborating with. It's the people that are coming in. What rocked my freaking world was seeing NASA involved. Yeah, how did that happen? How did you get with NASA?

And.

And what is that relationship looking like? I mean, if you're even allowed to talk about it. Yeah, tell us what you can tell us.

Yeah, so, I mean, so NASA is using it. Terry Rector is. Is using it with the people in the habitat. So they. They use NASA on pilots and astronauts, for example, preparing them so they'll do really tedious tasks. Like, for example, let me give you. I like to dumb things down because they make sense to me. Not. Not kind of like as a condescending thing, but just because they make more sense to me. So they do this exercise where, for example, they will fly a drone. So they'll get a pilot and they will have them fly a drone. Like, let's say, and I'm making this up now, let's say like 50ft this way, in a square, like in a cube, over and over and over. What's going to happen? It's like if you're driving laps at a racetrack, you know, obviously the quality is going to lessen as you start getting exhausted. This is a thing called resilience, obviously, which is what you're trying to build. So what they will do is they will basically train mendy so that they can do more and more laps without lowering that quality. So a lot of these things are like, very tedious things. But in the end, they really, really. They really have an effect, a real life effect when there is a, you know, situation of stress or where there's a situation where you need to be very focused. You know, Stanford is doing a lot of really, really cool things. That would be. Those would be some good guests for you to have. I can, I can, you know, connect you to something.

Yeah. One of the guys is Dr. Ben Rain, who, who you did connect me with.

You know, the funny thing is, you know how I met Ben Rain, like, so I literally DM'd him on Instagram. And I was like, I love your content. I can show you the dm. It's so he's got some cool stuff.

Where it's like him talking like a talking head in front of the research.

The thing is, like. So for me, it just resonated. It just made sense to me. It's the kind of thing where kind of like that, you know, that tick tock generation, that short clip generation, like, that's how you make people understand, right?

I can't. I just can't.

People don't want to re. People don't want to read papers and all this stuff. And those things are written for other researchers, right? It's like stripes on a jacket. Like, they don't care about that single mom feeling better. They don't give a about that kid feeling better. What they care about is the exactitude when there's no exactitude. So this is my issue with a lot of the science out there, but what I found, which has been very refreshing, is that a lot of scientists actually do care about impacting people's lives. And they're like, well, you know what? We can look at this and we can look at that. And if we scream, and that's why I'm using your platform and I'm very grateful for your platform, is if we scream out there. Kind of like when Optimus prime, when the Transformers are calling each other, it's like, whoever is out there that has info, that has knowledge, that wants to debate us, that wants to question us, fucking bring it on. Because we are all aligned. We're looking for the truth, and the truth does not hide. Like, there's really no answer out there that's going to scare us. The first people that reached out to me when we did the Kickstarter campaign, when we launched on Kickstarter is one of them was a guy named Ido Ben Artsy from Tel Aviv Neuroscience. And this guy. People would be like, oh, this is bullshit.

This is.

This. This is. We didn't have a device. People didn't never heard of us and stuff. And my answer was I would write my phone number. I've only had one phone number ever. Like, for years, since I've been in Sweden, I've had one phone number. The same one that I have right now. So that's why so many people have it, which is why I miss so many messages, right? Especially whatsapps. So basically what happens is that people would be like, oh, this is bullshit. This doesn't make sense. I'd be like, oh, hi, my name is Moha. I'm Mendy CEO. This is my phone number. You can go on Kickstarter and you can see this. I'm like, if you want it, by the way, if you want to get on a video call and record it, let's do it. Let's talk about whatever it is. Like, there's nothing that I'm afraid of because I'm not Like if you have nothing to hide, you know, is what you would say in Spanish. It's like, if you don't know anything, you're not afraid of anything. Right? And, and I remember Ido actually contacted me from Tel Aviv University, and he said, I'm actually reaching out to see if you're for real or if you're out of your fucking mind. And, and clearly you're both. And I was like, welcome to the party, you know, you know, what do I need to know? And that's kind of like the approach, right? And it's, you know, if another company is doing something that's beneficial, that's going to be able to help my mom or yours. Yeah, bring it on.

Like, it's a beautiful evolution of humanity that we've been in. And also there's a dark side. And the dark side, it only stays dark because we don't talk about it, we don't shine light on it, and we ignore it. And we stick our hands as a collective in the sand and put our head right there and we pretend that something's going to go away. Mental health and the true pandemic, not the plan Demic, but the true pandemic is mental health. It's something that I've struggled with. It's obviously in my family tree. Sounds like it was for you. And I know it is for probably over 50%, unfortunately, of people in America and you could even say globally, if half the world, world is sick, then we need something that will serve the whole. If half the world is sick, the other half can at least support the nurturing and the, the healing of humanity.

And even if it makes them 1% better, even if it doesn't fix the thing, if it makes people 1, 2, 3% better, why are we not doing it? Why is everybody not just dropping what they're doing and just focusing on that?

That's well said. And also, could we wear this and have it project us back to the pyramid so we could see the dawn of civilization? No, that'd be really cool if it could. But, like, this isn't some kind of heady thing. I know we wear it on our heads, but, like, it's not a heady thing that this FMRI, this functional near infrared spectroscopy, say that 10 times fast, man. This is the non invasive brain imaging technique that measures blood oxygen.

You just put it on for 10 minutes a day, right? You do your training just like you're going to go to the gym, you're going to do your, your bench presses and you're done. You go on with your day. You wake up, you do it, you're good, you're three times a week, three times a week, you can do it every day.

But to start 3x a week, 30 minutes a week, everybody's got that, everybody's got. Because we're probably in stress and in torment. 300 minutes a week. So if we just took 30, we covered so much ground today, man. And I really appreciate the, the personal story and like the vulnerability that you shared. I know it's not like the easiest.

I will actually process how if having said that, probably after this because I'm still in this moment.

Good.

Get a phone call from my sister.

Well, I think that I feel that people will really get the essence of, of why mendy exists and why you took over at the helm and, and what this whole thing is all about. Like, we've talked about the science, we talked about your story and really we talked about the human aspect of this. This is not just something that people want to tick a box and be like, I did my breakfast, I did my protein shake, I did my mending. It's not like that. Like to me everything's spiritual, Everything. Otherwise we wouldn't be here having a spiritual experience. We would just be like ones and zeros, like computers. But we're not fucking computers. We're men and women. We're human beings. And so this helps us be instead of living in the mind and fluttering around. So we covered this so much ground, dude. Like what, what did we miss? You know, what's something that, that still fascinates you about this work and, and about this world of mendy and mental health and, and what is something that maybe you've been wanting to share that, that maybe you haven't had the, the chance to share it yet.

I'm just grateful that you had me here, to be honest. I, I need nothing. I just want people to, I want people to have access. I don't believe in things that are exclusive. I, I, I'm very allergic to anything that is exclusive. I like think as an immigrant that grew up in a country that I'm not really from living in Sweden where everybody's blonde and blue eyed. For me it's about inclusion, it's about access, it's about that person that needs it. It's about that, you know, about people getting a chance. Because I feel very grateful that I've gotten so many chances, you know, and if I blew 49 of them, but I, it's stuck on the 50th you know, and I got my together and I'm, to me it's just like people deserves it, deserve at least a chance, you know, so it's for me it's just about these Swedes are building great stuff and if we can help make the world a little bit better with it. Thank you for allowing me to talk about it.

Oh man, thank you. And by the way, this table is from Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Oh, wow. This is a Perota tree.

That's awesome.

And so, and I've mentioned this, I felt at home, man, I've mentioned this a bunch on the podcast. Like there's just something beautiful about like Costa Rica in so many ways. So with your Costa Rican background and you know, makes me happy. The lifestyle that you've had and, and honestly, like even the near death experiences with drugs that we didn't have a chance to go into, maybe we'll do another podcast in the future when like Mendy's 2.5 or 3.0 version to, to what you know now to be true and with everything you've accumulated, like the entrepreneurship, the traveling and you know, the really the James Bond lifestyle that you lead, but also the groundedness that you have and the wisdom that you've picked up along the way from everything that you've learned. How do you see wellness? Like, how would you define a life of wellness? It's a question I've been asking myself since 2015, since we started this podcast. And I ask it to every guest and every guest has their own version of it. And sometimes the answers stick to our soul. And I know sometimes the answers stick to everyone else's soul. How do you define wellness? Like, what does that mean to live a life? Well.

It'S understanding that things are easy. People think too much and they get in the way of the answers that are in front of them. That applies to wellness. That applies to getting off the couch and getting your life together. That applies to absolutely everything. It's just that acknowledgment that it's easy, life goes on, life is beautiful, life is magical and life is easy. And as soon as you literally just say, I'm just going to start approaching things, like they're going to work out. They do. So that's it. It would be just understanding that things are easy. That's wellness starts there. If you're stressed and you're thinking that things are difficult, you can have a billion dollars and the best eight pack in the world. That's not wellness, man, that sucks.

That's a Life that's eloquent because even when things are hard subjectively, we have this objective mechanism in the brain. If we have a functioning pfc, if we can be in our body, we can actually see the challenges as good things. Which is a true paradox. Right? Like, why would I welcome challenge in my life? Why do I sit in an ice bath in the morning? Why do you do full 50, 40 pull ups? Like, why do we do these things? It's because there's, there's a part of our, our soul that knows, like when we do the hard things, we start to reassociate to the hard things. Is actually love and of service to us because it makes us stronger. Otherwise we wouldn't be evolving as human beings. We would just be like these mediocre little controlled. Well, some people think we are being controlled. That's a whole nother conspiracy theory podcast. But yeah, man, it's been a great journey with you here and I'm just excited about the road ahead. And, and also thank you. You gave our audience a discount, which is huge. Like, it's not cheap, it's not easy, even though you say it is for a team of like 30 plus to. To go to market from Sweden in America and do something that's actually going to impact people. So y' all need to go right now to joshtrend.com forward/mendy. The code is Josh20. It's 20 off. It's already way cheaper than going out on the weekend and doing unhealthy stuff. So y' all just go to that link. It's right here in the show notes. And if you're listening, it's wherever you can tap your player. The code is Josh20. Dude, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited about this. I'm excited about helping people in, in a really practical way without pills. That lights me up. So from my heart to yours, thank you for coming on the show and for all of us, from Moha, from Josh, from both of our teams. We're both wishing you guys love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for watching this video.

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