Real-life "Limitless" Pill? This Breakthrough Nootropics Stack Gives You The Winning Edge

We would all love to have the experience that Bradley Cooper had in the movie Limitless where he takes the clear pill and as he's walking up the stairs, suddenly the lights come on, he can hear a little sharper. Most people don't believe that it's possible to achieve that level of cognitive and life performance. And I'm here to tell you that you not only can do it, but you can make it a predictable part of your day.

How many entrepreneurs can't get out to market because their brain just doesn't work well? How many moms at home can't tend to their children properly because they're flooded with all these blocks.

Like, if you've ever had somebody come in and go, I have no time for that now, or I can't think about that. But what if you had the cognitive performance empowerment to be able to go, I can deal with that. And it's not going to pull away from my ability to accomplish this other thing I have to accomplish today. When you have more intellectual bandwidth and mental capacity, it reflects in every area of your body. Instead of having this radical hormone flood fight or flight during a perceived negative event, instead you can look at it, almost laugh at it, and go, all right, bring it. Do this thing.

Oh my God. We're literally starting. Mark, this is beautiful. We're starting the podcast at 11:11am CST. Oh, come on.

Yes, yes. I'm seeing it right here as we speak.

Come on, man. All right, Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Josh, nice to, Nice to spend some time with you. Great to meet you and so cool that you're hailing from one of the places closest to my heart, Austin, Texas.

Hey, you know, listen, we moved out here for freedom. We were actually in California during the whole experiment, the health experiment, the theater. And when we moved out here, Mark, I, I met so many people in the wellness, cognition, biohacking, neurology, functional medicine space. It just absolutely rocked our world. Just like I know this conversation is going to do as well. Mark, give people like literally a elevator 30 second. Don't go too much because I want to unpack it slow with you, but give us like the 32nd who you are in the world today. If people have never heard of Mark.

Effinger, I love it. So I am. So we'll go with it. We'll go with a basic title thing. I'm the chief product officer for, for two companies. One called My Optimizers, which is a very well known gut health and, and nutritional supplement company, and then one called New Topia, which is a extension of a company that I've been building since 2008.

And this company, I got introduced by a friend of ours, Anthony, who. Who was actually introduced to us by Sean. He used to manage this podcast. So the roots run deep when it comes to utopia. And I want to start the conversation in this place. There's a lot of things that people misunderstand, Mark, about cognition and really just about how. How the brain works and how these different compounds can support the brain and all the neurotransmitters. Is it nootropics or is it nootropics? Which one is it?

So I love. Here's the deal. It's nootropics if in fact, nootropics, if you are going from a legitimate Greek standing, which is kind of where it was originated. I love nootropics because it sounds like there's a palm tree in the background. There's a beach in front of me, and there's crystal blue waters. Right, so.

Okay, cool. Well, they're interchangeable then. So. So what are people. What do people tend to get wrong? Your company. I. I know Wade. Wade is interviewed, mentor, friend of mine, Paul. So I'm very familiar with bio optimizers. But Nootopia is.

You're talking about P check, brother.

P check. New Topia is new on scene for me. Now, I know it's not brand new, but it's fairly new in the marketplace. And the genesis of why this even came to be there is quite the story and quite the momentum with it. It was actually something that touched my heart, that made me want to interview with you. And it was Tish. It was your wife who had passed. And I know there's a story there, and I know you've been public about it, so that good.

That was Tish. There's Tish and my first. My firstborn Kaylee. And here she is. This is right before an event. We were speaking at an event many years ago.

Yes.

And. Yeah, so, yeah, so it was. It was a sad thing. She was an amazing artist, musician, vocalist and actress. And so, yeah, and all of our children, we had three children. One still works for me, which I love, Livy. And she's a special operations. She's our SOS girl. And. But we basically, we got into health because I had faded health and I had a health crisis in early 90s. And in fact, I think every one of your listeners will. Will realize that at one point in your life, there's a very high probability that you're going to have a health crisis. It can be as tragic as a car wreck or it can be as insidious as aging. And so it's really key for us to be kind of aware of that. And I was one of those people as a serial entrepreneur. I was this kind of brute force guy. I grew up in a blue collar, hardscrabble home that you make your way, you buy your school clothes, you pick berries when you're seven to do that kind of stuff and anything extra you got to earn on your own. And as a result of that, you get this work ethic that comes in and it's embedded in you, it's part of your DNA. And so when I became an entrepreneur in the mid-1980s, I just worked my ass off. My whole thing was I can just outwork anybody. And so when you're doing a startup, you go, okay, cool, I'm going to learn advertising, I'm going to learn copywriting, I'm going to learn product development, I'm going to learn, I'm going to go deeper and deeper into my electronics background and laser and all the other stuff that I had done as a kid. And I'm going to make it into something that people will find valuable and that I can build a business around. And I did that. But by, and that was, I built my first company and sold it. In 1986 I became an Inc 500 company, one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America at that point. And then in, in 1993, I was running three companies. A tech company out of Beaverton, Oregon. I was living in Vancouver, Washington at the time. And then an advertising agency and startup incubator. And the challenge is, is you eventually run out of bandwidth. You will, eventually will.

I would mention you just mentioned multiple careers that people spend one lifetime doing and you just decide three or four things in one lifetime. So I could totally see how you'd run out of bandwidth, but please keep going.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, so, so, so by 1993 I had, and I, I was in the Pacific Northwest. You just don't have sunlight, your vitamin E production dies critically. I was a, I was a white rat in the military for a drug called Accutane, which is just extremely carcinogenic. It's an awful drug. And yeah, I got rid of cystic acne, but it gave me pre cancerous conditions.

Now that's been taken off the market. Correct. Accutane, is that still out there?

It's still out there, man.

And here's how is it still out There with everything.

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. I was, I was a bodybuilder at the time, or I was, I was, I was training for bodybuilding and, and during endurance athletics as well, you know, long distance running as well as, as well as bicycling and motorcycle road racing and hang gliding and, and rock climbing. I was, I was kind of. Those were my, my bailiwick. And the challenge was. So I'm on this, I'm, I'm taking this drug, but I'm 215 pounds and you know, under 10% body fat. So they're feeding me mega doses of this stuff. And so I'm traveling from Central California where my, my Air Force base was, to San Francisco, the Presidio, which is where the Army Medical center was. And they were giving these mega doses of this stuff and then testing my blood and saliva and urine and hair for any kind of metabolites or, you know, things that might be problematic. And after six months of that, I mean, I, it was, it was, it was crazy. I was six. I was, I was in a Jesus rock band at the time. And I'm singing a try, I'm trying Triumph, Fight the Good Fight. A classic power trio, Canadian power trio rock tune. The incredible lyrics. And as I'm reaching I'm so dry because of Accutane. As I'm reaching to do this super high tenor note should have been, you know, it should have been falsetto or should have been soprano. And instead I was just going for it and I cracked from here down to my collarbone and started bleeding in front of a bunch of church kids at a, at a church camp. So, so yes, it's, it's a really nasty drug. And by 1993, my, my thyroid had started to, to fail on me. I was, I was. My blood sugar was completely unregulated. I didn't know how to eat well. I had not, I had not been training like I had typically been training. I was only training two to three days a week. And I was used to training five to six days. And I wasn't training hard. I was just doing enough to stay alive. You know, you get into this, this work is more important than my life kind of mode, which is a very dangerous place to be. I recommend anybody that is living that understand that either this is just a short cycle and you're going to be able to cycle out of it or figure out a way to do some kind of site, you know, cycle time where you can balance it because you're not going to be successful and Be balanced.

That is a perfect stopping place right there because you have unpacked already. A lot of why you actually had nature create the vacuum for you to be a founder, a co founder of Nootopia. And also how these things made their way into your life, these different compounds that support the brain. I think about you being in a rock band and then being in the military and then going through all these.

I had hair like you, except not as cool, but thanks, Mom.

And. And so I think about this, this path that you took, and I'm like, okay, all of us, like you said, we all go through some type of a health journey that really rocks us to our core or it catches up with us later. Like, in other words, there's a timeline on our behaviors, and these behaviors can be efficacious for us or they can be deleterious. I think about if you were to look back and look at yourself at that time, was there even an inkling, Was there even a seed planted for you in any way that these cognitive enhancements or these nootropics would ever come into your life? Was that even a seed that was planted back then?

Not until in. In 93, two things happened. I went to a bed and breakfast owned by an ND, MD, and the ND side of him recognized by just holding my hand and asking me questions as I was going into his bed and breakfast house, not knowing, by the way, he was a doctor. He said, you know, I think you might be. I think you might be hypothyroid. He goes, let's talk about that. But first let's have some wine and meet my friends from all over the world. He was a Doctors Without Border doctor. Right. So that was. That was number one. So. And he got me on desiccated thyroid, and it absolutely changed my life. So that was the aha. Moment of. Hold it. This thing, this exogenous thing that is naturally derived when it. When induced into my body, can actually make my body perform like it used to perform when I was in my 20s. And that was the. That was the first. Aha. The second was listening to a radio show as I was driving somebody to the Portland airport, and a guy saying, there's this thing called vinpocetine and another thing called Huperzine A, which are two of these naturally derived components that are extracted from plants that can increase the amount of acetylcholine in the synapse in your brain. And I'm going, okay, I know enough about biology to understand what a synapse, you know, I was a cognitive guy from early age. But hold it, you mean I can actually take something that is going to have a net positive effect on my neurology and could actually have a long term benefit? Not just take the pill, get the effect. Effect wears off. You become Eddie Mora after he, you know, after NZT is out, right? Is I'm going, holy crap. You can actually have a sustainable, an event that becomes a sustainable bonus to your neurology. And that was the aha. And then I went pretty heavy into that back in the early 90s.

It's a massive, it's a massive aha. Because I think like acetylcholine, right? The, the thinking and learning neurotransmitter. Yes. So I think about how many people mark that even have autism or people that are dealing with learning disabilities or people that have any kind of cognitive impairment at all. Maybe we can unpack that later in the podcast today. I think about if, if the neurotransmitter is for thinking and learning and really the. I think the brain is really cool. It gives and receives information and it keeps us safe. I'm curious how you might feel about that. I think the brain only has really two jobs. But, but when I think about this neurotransmitter, what is it about our current world that gives people issues with this key neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. In other words, what blocks it, what impairs it in the human brain?

So one of the things is we're, we're typically running from a, when it comes to cognitive performance, we're typically coming from, you know, we have a lot of dietary imbalances and dietary issues that we're dealing with. I mean, even in the, in the development of our products, we're finding that a lot of the things that are called clean, when we call out the farm or the manufacturer, the processor or the extractor, we say, hey, give me the coa, the certificate of authenticity and let me see how you extract this, how you do this. You find these little things that you never expected, right? A seed oil that you had no idea they were using in that process.

Do you feel like that might also be mycotoxins that are found in animal fats and beef?

Oh, huge. Huge. Yeah. I mean, we don't have to go Asprey land to understand that some of these things are really, really problematic. And they're kind of pervasive in that they're in all kinds of structures. And unless you know that you're getting a compound or if you're getting, like, you just mentioned meat. Right. Unless you're getting an organic meat from a good source that, you know already tests for that, then there's a probability. I live in the Midwest right now. There's probably. That's going to be a problem. I just moved toward in. To Burlington, Iowa. Right. In the Mississippi. I would not dive into the Mississippi on a bet. We're talking about. About really bad. The fertilizers are huge. They're toxic. They, you know, they're destroying the Gulf life. Right. And the Gulf of Mexico. So this is the kind of things that we're dealing with on a daily basis. But we don't think about it because one, we're just trying to survive. We're just trying to go to the, you know, the local natures or. Or other similar stores and get our. Our grub for the week. And then we're buying our vitamins, not understanding which ones are chemically processed and which ones are naturally derived. Yeah. And we're doing things like this even in an attempt to become healthy. We are oftentimes toxifying ourselves. So it's really important that we take a little bit of extra time to understand the difference between those two and to focus on. It would be better to have. It would be better to build up the natural derivatives and metabolites that our body wants to produce through our own natural human biochemical reactions than to supplement with something that's chemically negative.

That's really, really well put. I think, about the hot food bar Mark at Whole Foods. Y' all have a Whole Foods out there?

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah.

Okay. There's inflammatory seed oils in the hot food bar. So when you talk about the blood brain barrier and you touch the back of your neck there, what I'm hearing from you, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's a gate, there's a sieve, there's osmosis that happens back, back there and in many points in our body. And if we allow these different toxins, Right. Whether it's phytoestrogens from plastic or excitotoxins, or if we're not sleeping enough and our brain's creating toxins. So we're kind of in this toxic soup. And if you hang out with the wrong people, there can be an emotional toxic soup as well. So I think about, like, okay, now that we've really understood you, the physiological issue, how do we get the acetylcholine into our bodies? And how did you start learning about this for nootopia Because I've taken these products for two months now. I've actually stopped and Neurohacker is going to hate me, but I'm going to go for it. I've stopped using Neurohacker. I'm sorry, you guys. I really have. I have to say here live on the podcast, I've never said that publicly. They're a great brand. They're great people. And maybe their products would work for some other people. But just like I'm allowed to change my mind based on new science and new data and new experience, I have never encountered a product quite like this. I take this one called Upbeat, and I also use this spray here, which we did on the episode with Waylon Myers, the Zamner Juice. So it comes in this black box that Mark is holding up right here. Y' all need to check this out. You can actually go right now. Joshtrent.com newtopia and check it out right now while you're on the podcast. If you're watching, the box is filled with the most incredible cutting edge supplements. And anybody that's in partnership with Wade, I trust, just because of that relationship, because of how much science and honestly, spirituality that, that you and Wade put into your products. So share with us the acetylcholine specifically, how did you start to learn about that? How did you start bringing that science into Newtopia?

So I'll make it a really short backstory. So my wife, we had our last child, all natural births at home. On front of the couch, in front of the fireplace. On the couch.

Oh, they were all natural births.

Yeah, it was great.

Yeah, amazing. We're going for natural birth on number two.

We.

We have number two on the way, Mark. So we're going for natural birth number two right here. We're gonna do it, Josh. We're gonna do it.

It is. It is the. It is the best. In fact, it was so funny. The first one was a hot tub. Kaylee, the one that, that was in that picture, that little diaper duty.

And that's Tish right there, too. Yes.

And that is Tish. Yep, yep. And there's Tish. And there she is. You can get an idea.

Wow.

So, yeah, great. So she's giving birth, crushing my hand as. As she's pushing out Livy, my. My youngest. And. And says, you're getting cut. Because at that point she's going, that's it. Three babies. We're done. Yeah. But the, the midwife, the midwife, she. Tish tore. And the midwife says, because they were they were going to do an episiotomy. Tish said no, I said no. Which is basically where you sniff the vagina and expand it so that you can get the baby out. Right. But we were able to push her out. But she did tear a little bit. Back then. Nobody knew about the Sackler plan to infect the United States with oxycodone. Oxycontin, Right. So the midwife gave her four oxycodone, said, just take these throughout the next week and that'll get rid of the pain, you'll be fine. And the challenge was that Tish was, and her family, actually, it's a genetic thing, was very susceptible to those kinds of chemicals. Right. The opiate receptor in the brain was very sensitized and ready for action. And she didn't know it, I didn't know it. And as a result of that, those four oxycodone became her muse. She fell in love with them. And from 1998 to 2008, she became deeper and deeper into the addiction of those products. So very scary thing in 2008 as a result of not being able to mitigate the pain that she was feeling anymore, and we had separated and divorced and we're starting to date again. And she ended up committing suicide on an overdose of oxycodone, methadone and alcohol all in one night. So it's a tragic story. And it was scary as hell to see the emergency crews trying to put a six inch needle into her heart to try to restart her so they could harvest organs later because she clearly had been dead long enough that there was probably no brain activity. But that was the catalyst. I was pissed. I actually tweeted it. I was so pissed. I tweeted it in my, on my BlackBerry at the time and said, what the hell's going on? And so, and that kind of led to how do I get people out of this addictive behavior thing? That seems to be. Right. A real problem in America. I have an, I have an, an elder sibling that also has been addicted to, or was at one time addicted to heroin for 30 years. And so I've, I've been exposed to it and I kind of have seen it. It almost never turns out good. And so my. From there I just took and I relit my biochemic, biochemical background. During the 90s, I'd built some human growth hormone, some exogenous human growth hormone stimulating components, and, and then a very light nootropic. And so I, I knew the language and I knew some of the stuff that could be effective. But I, I was in a, in a really great point. And a good friend, David McGinnis, who lives, the founder of PR Web, who lives in Austin, actually just outside of Austin, he gave me the Runway to be able to go, go make the thing that's going to change the world. And so from 2008 to 2012, I buried myself in neurochemical research. I happen to have a brainstorming software company at the time that was very useful because all of my customers were a lot of smart people that like to think clearly. And so I could tap into them with prototypes of my products. And what I did is on the choline side, I started working with an amino acid called pyroglutamic acid with pyroglutamate, which is a glutamine recept agonist, as well as a acetylcholine precursor. And so those two components, I would take mega doses of that at night and see how I, how it improved my performance during the day. And this is a clue as well, by the way. So when you, when you're, when I took it at night, it would actually make me sleepy and it would elevate my dream life. So, right. Acetylcholine flow was increasing my dream activity. So my REM activity was going through the roof. I was sleeping like a baby. I was waking up in the morning, bright and sharp like no coffee needed. And then for the next two and a half to three hours, I was a rock star. I was whiteboarding ideas, I was coming up with formulations. I was doing research. I was connecting with people that I needed to connect with to forward this venture. And I wasn't thinking of it as a company. I just wanted to create something that would make a difference to people that were dealing with addiction and people that were dealing with cognitive decline. Those two things were very close, near and dear to my heart, especially as a scientist and somebody that's worked in that space for years. And that's where it kind of the aha moments came with, okay, this makes me sleepy. How would you make something that actually is effective during the day? And I started looking at existing components and formulations. The only thing out there at the time was on its alpha brain. That was the only outside of stuff that was black market or gray market or on the dark web. You couldn't get anything that would make, make a cognitive performance improvement outside of assembling literally dozens of capsules from all these different companies and then hoping that you get some good result right So I, as I was going through this process, I started investigating and I found out that that to make something that was really going to be effective and put it in either a powder form or, or a capsule form, you needed to address the main things that keep people from performing. Anyhow. So number one was inflammatory response. Okay, we got to get rid of inflammatory response. So, so anti inflammatories and then in antioxidants, those were like, oh, okay, let's what are the most powerful antioxidants and anti inflammatory. So I started assembling those. I didn't know what a stack was. I didn't know the terminology. Building a stack of nutrients or supplements or, or extracts to create a third, you know, to create a, a compound product. I just knew that if I got rid of inflammation, that effect that I got in the morning from this pyroglutamic acid lasted longer and it was stronger. And then the next was. Well, I found that most people basically based on research, their B vitamin, they had a deficit in B vitamins because they were burning up the B vitamins and they're water soluble. So they would. Right. They would eat them up really quick. So adding a B vitamin layer was really important. And then it was. And then it was also adding a acetylcholine precursor layer so that your brain could create this thinking molecule, this, this thinking and memory molecule that's so important for that and it would produce it at a rate that wasn't too fast. Because if you have too much choline in your system, you'll have a tendency to get a foggy brain and you might even be kind of pissed, right? It'll change your mood. But if you use precursors and signaling molecules to say, I've got the stuff that you need to make this and let's signal the brain and say, hey, if you want to call this up, you can call it up now. As much as you need for the functions that you need it for, as long as you need it. And by doing those two things, signaling molecule with the precursor to whatever, the neurochemistry, the neurochemical that I needed, right? That was like an aha moment. So we get rid of our inflammatory response, we induce B vitamins, which are really critical for your operation, your overall operation, plus we're going to speed up your brain, we're going to clock your brain up a bit. And by doing that, we're going to start eating up more and more of these, these important nutrients and then we're going to add. So you get so Then we get an antioxidant response, right? And now we got an, we have a precursor to one of the, the primary neurochemicals needed for thought. And then, then what could you, what could you add to that? How could you make it even better? Like what is the thing that you could do to tweak the angle of attack to say, I don't just need acetylcholine. What if I wanted motivation and reward? Well, that would be dopamine. So let's put a dopaminergic precursor in there and we're going to angle that. But let's do it like you would a graphic equalizer. Like if you were trying to tune your speed, you know, if you were trying to make your stereo sound better, right? I want more bass or I want more treble or I want more mid range. Well, if you think of those as neurochemicals, I want more motivation and I want more reward. Well, that's going to be dopamine. I want more thinking and I want more memory. Well, it's going to be acetylcholine. I want more verbal fluency and I want more love. Well, now we're talking about, right, we're going into the other neurochemicals. Really, really important, right? So serotonin and those and anandamide. I want the pleasure molecule, I want the bliss molecule. I want a little bit of anandamide, which has a very short half life. So you have to do a little bit of magic to get it to last longer. And so you start working with these things and you start building this orchestra and you start calling the instruments up at the right rate that they're going to flow into your neurochemistry and your biochemistry and give you a result for a specific amount of time or a long, long period. And again, you don't want to hammer them, you don't want them to come up instantly. We would all love to have the experience that Bradley Cooper had in the movie Limitless where he takes the clear pill. He starts walking up the stairs, and as he's walking up the stairs, suddenly the lights come on, the colors are a little brighter, he can hear a little sharper. He can take a glimpse at the book that his, his landlord's wife is holding and or is in her book bag. Just glance at it and remember from 10 years ago when he was in med, you know, he was trying to go to med school or he saw it on a TA's, right? And all of those events, we all want those events to happen. But Most people don't believe that it's possible to achieve that level of cognitive and life performance. And I'm here to tell you that you not only can do it, but you can make it a predictable part of your day. So, yeah, one of the things about stack development and one of the things that I found when, when doing really, really progressive neurogenesis is meaning that the neurons, you're creating blooms of new neurons. And there's a thing called bdnf, brain derived neutrophic factor, which is kind of like setting the bedrock, putting the, all of the components in place. Really nice soil, right? Really, really rich soil with tons of minerals and those things. That's bdnf. And then the result of that, if you have the components, right, is neurogenesis, where you create these new brain cells. Well, when you're spawning new brain cells, when you're growing things, that takes energy. And so one of the components that we have available in every one of our stacks is an amount of what we call a stim stack, a stimulant stack. People misread it and saying, oh, they're just throwing a bunch of caffeine in this. Not true. What we do is we, we take complementary molecules, we bond them together and then we build them into a stack that helps your brain. Instead of going through a lag period while things are going through your blood, brain barrier, going into the brain and then processing, pulling apart into the various neurochemicals and then getting into this effect of either improving mood or, or, or increasing the neurochemicals or, or creating neurogenesis, spawning neurogenesis. When that's happening, that takes energy, okay, mitochondrial energy. And so what we do is we create a stack of components that increase the mitochondrial output, what's called ATP in the brain, so that you raise the level of cognitive performance while that processing is happening. And then we gently fade it away so that when the cognitive performance comes up, you're not doubling up on it radically unless you want to. Right. What you're doing is you're getting the cognitive performance component and we're again getting rid of the stim. We try to keep the stim based on the millions, over 14 million data points. Now we try to keep the cognitive performance and the stim level so that you do not notice any lag and you are not overstimulated. What you are is your awareness and wakefulness level is increased and your ability to process cognitive events is radically increased without you feeling like you're jittery or on edge. That's the ultimate goal. I love that because that's why we do.

I was sharing with you earlier, and I'm so glad we're talking about this. I was actually sharing, just when we're offline, that when I'm dealing with my woman and with Carrie, she's having her, you know, our second baby and a lot that she's going through. And I asked you, would this xamna juice be something safe? Would it be efficacious for her to take as far as mood regulation and uplifting of mood and things like that? And your answer was fundamentally, yes. Because inside of here is something really special. This is the gamma, the L theanine, and what else is in here that actually makes people calm down when we look at the Zamner juice? Because it's giving us that openness without the excitatory CNS activation. That's what I like the most.

So there's a little bit of kava extract, and again, it's a really, really clean extract. And again, it's the minimum viable dose with potentiators to give you the maximum possible effect, along with California poppy seed extract, so. Which is incredible for increasing your. Your delta wave activity and rem. So the idea was. And then there's some amino acids in there as well. Outside of just gaba, the idea was I want to get your GABA levels to almost instantaneously work so that you have this. This initial flow of calmness. And then what I want to do is I want to get the serotonin levels to gently up, not recirculate, not like an ssri. The problem with recirculating in neurochemical behavior, as well as most of the body as well, by the way, is anytime you do that, you're signaling to the body to quit producing that key neurotransmitter or biological factor or hormone that you need. If you recirculate it, that's what you do. The signaling says, hey, I got enough of this. I don't need anymore. Quit producing that stuff. What we do is we say we have the byproduct, the. Or the, the. The precursor available, and we have a signaling molecule that says, you can have this. Now do you want some gaba? We've got enough gaba. Grab some gaba, right? Or even some, some here, let's float some GABA in there and signal at the same time. Do you want more gaba? We can give you more gaba. Do you want some serotonin on top of that? Would you like to top that with a little bit of serotonin, you want to feel like you've accomplished something. Let's give you a little bit of dopamine on top of that. Oh, do you need to feel the pleasure and bliss? Let's give you some anandamide on that. So in. In doing that, we get rid of the downregulation issue that happens when you do recirculation, and we increase your body's natural ability to produce the things that it wants to produce, but previously maybe didn't have those precursors. Hope. That makes sense.

It makes perfect sense, because positive thinking doesn't work alone. We have to be supported. So isn't it cool that we live in a time where we can be in the experience of these different products and that they actually exist? It's amazing, man. Thank you.

Oh. Oh, yeah. The future's there.

And what's really interesting about what you're sharing is that the genesis of where this came from. Mark, I know you've been talking about a lot of science right now, which is important. I mean, look, we need both. We need science, and we need story, and we also need spiritual. But the spirit and the heart, where you come from, I mean, I'll just tell you straight up, like, that's. That's why I wanted to have you on the show. The place that you came from, the space. The space that you serve from, to honor Tish, to honor your family, and to support the mental health of people out there, is so close to my heart. My mom has struggled with manic bipolar her entire life. I'm the only one in my family that has not done SSRIs. I have draped and fumbled and walked my way into wellness just because I was in so much pain myself. And I think about how many people out there that are going to literally have their lives changed. And that's not an understatement, literally have their lives changed by these products. And I think about this because there are so many people out there that first, maybe they don't know where hope is. They think that the way their brain works or the way their biochemistry works is like a life sentence or a death sentence, but it's just simply not the case. So, first of all, before I ask you any more questions, thank you for creating what you've created from the place you created it from. That is the most important thing I wanted to address here.

There's a song by Peter Gabriel called Salisbury Hill. It's about when he left Genesis and had to venture out on his own. And in the song. He's dealing with this kind of like, you know, like, I'm completely taking a risk by leaving and starting something new. Right. Which we all do it at multiple times in our lives.

Yeah, yeah.

We're all going to have transitions, right? We start over and we're going to go and it's going to be scary and we're going to be, you know, we're going to be full of fear, maybe, or full of the unknown. And a couple things. One is I'm super, super fortunate to have people like you in my life. People like Wade Lightheart and Matt Gallant, the founders of Optimizers, who, Who we. We actually met because of a spiritual event on Facebook, of all places.

What was the event? What was the spiritual event?

A common friend of ours, Brad Costanza is his name, he's a well known kind of life coach, executive coach, had opened up a box of my products, and this is when I had a company called Web Nutrients. And he poured it out and he took a picture of it and he said something like, this is the magic that keeps me going even when everything else is hammering at me. And, and there's a bunch of people on the thread saying, well, have you tried this or have you done that? He goes, look, you guys know, I try everything. I do everything. Anything that will make me a better human being, I will do it. And, and, you know, and. And it was. It was kind of great. And Matt Gallant saw that and he said the spirit washed over him and he felt this immediate need. He goes, I've. You know, he felt his personal journey had. He'd spent over $140,000 trying to do this. And he felt like, oh, my God, the melding of the minds. And I was in the middle. There were companies trying to acquire my company that were offering me significant sums to say here, just give us your customers, give us your formulas, and we'll go do this stuff. And you can go do whatever you want to do, because you'll be set up. And my whole thing was, I was called, this isn't a. This is an adventure. I invented. I was called to make a monumental contribution to every life I touch. And the way to do that seems to be this vehicle of meeting people like you that have a heart for changing every life they touch. Right. So getting to expand that vision with folks like you, Josh, and then having the people like Bioptimizers and my utopia crew who are so committed to making, to literally biologically optimizing every life on earth that is literally, we have a Prayer we do every Monday. Everybody on in the company is on a zoom call and for one minute we close our eyes and we meditate on how instrumental it is that we make an impact on the earth. So. So you're absolutely right that this is a spiritual journey. It just so happens that we have these physical manifestations of that that we're really fortunate to be able to create and share.

And that makes sense because we're a soul having a human experience. Mark, you know, there'll never be another Mark. They'll never be another you ever. There'll never be another me. But we, we're in these suits of meat and water. And these suits of meat and water, they need certain things to function well. Otherwise spirit can't flow through and can't flow out. So I think about the high level and maybe you could just tell us this. The high level of the most important neurotransmitters that must pay attention to for not just neuroprotection, but also cognition and the way we can amplify our thoughts into the world, the way that we can create. How many entrepreneurs can't get out to market because their brain just doesn't work well? How many moms at home can't tend to their children properly because they're flooded with all these blocks in their brain on a biochemical level that are blocking them from loving their kids, being present with their kids, being present with themselves. What are maybe the top four or so neurotransmitters that we should really understand if we want to have a healthy brain and a healthy life?

So you're not going to get out of bed if you don't have your dopamine working for you. So. And you're going to be one of the things that people fight if they're doing, if they're on a caffeine habit is adenosine. There's a thing called adenosine receptor. And what caffeine does is it is adenosine is what actually builds up during a day that helps you to sleep at night.

It makes us tired.

It does, yes, it does, yeah. So if you're plugging the adenosine receptor with caffeine first thing in the morning, then what you're doing is you're basically allowing the adenosine to build up even faster. And then that's why you have a crash in the mid afternoon. So dopamine is super important for your motivation. It's also important that if you're going to be doing some kind of stimulant Any layer of stimulant to hold off for 90 to 120 minutes before you take it. And that is going to give you an absolute radical edge on everyone else because you're not going to be reliant on the stimulant to get you out of bed. And even though the warm cup of coffee is so nice, get some warm, you know, decaf tea or, you know, green tea is really great.

I had to let go of coffee, man. Do you drink coffee?

I will do, I will do coffee. But I, I, but I follow the rules and I don't do it for at least 90 minutes after I wake up. And I'm much more. One of my mentors, which, the guy that financed Nike, right, his name was Jack Nichols, is he stopped taking coffee. And we would go to dinner, lunch or whatever, and at lunch or breakfast and he would have hot water with a slice of lemon. And I go, jack, why? Why not? Because he's such a motivated guy who's in his 70s, 80s, when and when we were very close. And he goes, he goes, mark, he goes, coffee's black. He goes, I don't pee black. Where's the black go? So, right. His, his logic was I'm not going to put anything in my body that I can't see on the way out. Right.

Okay.

I can't recognize on the way out. So that was his thing. But it does make a big difference. So if you have, if you. So let's go to the first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. Let's make sure that we allow that, that adenosine molecule to fully buffer out of our system. Let's improve our acetylcholine level. So to improve acetylcholine level, we want to have a precursors to acetylcholine. Right? Well, let's get our dopamine up so we're motivated to get out of bed and we're smiling when we get the reward that whatever it is that we're trying to do, trying to accomplish, that's why it's super important to journal and meditate to. One is to kind of set our intention and the other is to give us bits and pieces of micro accomplishments that we can envision and experience throughout the day so that our day isn't just this one big thing that's going to take a year to accomplish our million dollar goal or whatever the thing is, or, you know, or the raising our kids through this next school year. We need those micro accomplishments and we need to have enough dopamine in our system that we get the motivation and we get the reward. And that's really, really where that's super important. Then we want serotonin. We want the serotonin that it helps us connect with our loved ones, with our clients and our friends, and also makes us feel good about life unfolding. And it's also really valuable in what they call verbal fluency is when you're, when your acetylcholine is good and your serotonin are good, those levels are at the right kind of coordinated function, then the words come easier. And the love and intention of the words pass through, whether it's our 2000 miles away or 1500 miles away, right? Or right next to the person that you're laying in bed with.

When you say pass through, do you mean the defenses that we have, the walls we've built up, the ways in which we block that love from coming in?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the flow that you want, the intention that you really want comes through, not the criticalness maybe of your speaking or maybe, maybe not the right, the fear that you're facing when you're, when you're in this call. Right. Because we all have that. Those are, those are natural responses. But, but if we have the right neurochemical balance, those are not the dominant responses. The dominant responses are I can't wait to have a dialogue with Josh today and to mind meld with him. Right. And spirit meld, heart meld with them. Because that's really what I want to do versus who is this guy? What's it, what does he really want out of me? Right. Those kinds of things, those second guessing things that we, that have a tendency to block our ability to flow and, and get into joy with other people.

There's quite a bit there. And I loved your answer because it reminds me of a concept I've heard from many people on the show. And it's hardware and software. So really with the Nootopia you're actually supporting and potentially through neuroplasticity, changing, changing the hardware. But the software is our responsibility. Well, let's be honest, they're both our respons disability. We have to take care of the hardware and the software together both because we're like we talked about, we're a spirit in a physical meat suit. So. So think about, and I'm curious what you would say to this. Think about the hardware that we have in our brain where it's the gaba, the serotonin, the dopamine, the acetylcholine all the different ways that our brain actually functions. What would you say to the people that are dealing with emotional distress for 10, 20, 30 years? Trauma that they've tried so hard to let go of or to process or to work with professionals, Gestalt, whatever. Fill in the blank. How many people are actually dealing with, in your opinion, a hardware issue rather than a software issue? They've gone to all the shows, they've gone to Tony Robbins, they've done all the, quote, practices. But are they really dealing with a chemical level? Are they really dealing with a lack of acetylcholine or a lack of serotonin and dopamine?

Yeah, I. I would. I mean, it's the largest. Whenever you have a chronic condition like that, that. And again, we have this amazing ability to face those chronic conditions, but they're insidious in that they break us down slowly. You don't notice it's a frog boiling.

Yeah. Yeah.

And as a result of that, we don't notice until we're typically at a critical spot that maybe our ability to communicate isn't as rich, loving, warm, kind, necessary as it once was. Maybe our ability to deal with the next stress event isn't as good. There was a time in my life, Josh, where I was literally waiting for the other shoe to drop every moment of the day. No matter how great my life was going along, I was waiting for the crappy event that was going to decimate my afternoon. It was going to raise my blood pressure. It was going to get me yelling or screaming.

I really feel like this is something that's not understood. And, of course, we're not giving medical advice. We're not here saying that y' all should stop anything you're doing. You should always, because of legal ramifications, always consult with your doctor. And I have to say that. Right. And we'll say that at the beginning of this show as well. But with that said, with that lace of awareness that you have to have a physician to work with you, there is a reason, Mark, that the DSM and all these different structures from some. From pharmacy companies and all the different SSRIs that are out there, there's a reason why it's not working. What do you think that reason actually is the reason why just the pills, the external things aren't working? What's really going on in the human brain, the human soul that is making this malady occur in the first place?

You know, you mentioned software, hardware, and I think of it as wetware. Is. Is right. Is that this one is, we've disconnected, we've said these two are completely separate things. Right?

Right.

The whole, the heart, soul and the mind are completely separate things. They're not, they're, they're spiritually intrinsically linked. And trying to separate those as we've done has caused a chasm to occur that isn't natural. 2 We're dealing with our environment is become toxic. When I used to, when I used to commute in the Portland, Oregon area, I would drive from Vancouver, Washington over the Columbia river, the IFI Bridge to Beaverton, Oregon where I had my company. It's a 20 minute drive in bad weather with no Traffic at between 10 and 10:30 in the morning, it's a 20 minute drive at between 8 and 10:30. At 10 o' clock in the morning it's a two hour drive. And between 3, 3:30 and 6 in the evening it's a two and a half to three hour drive. We're facing that on a daily basis. Many, many people are facing that on a daily basis. That alone is enough intrinsic stress of putting on the brake and putting on the throttle, putting on the brake, putting on the throttle, looking next to you, the trucker that's blocking your way, all of those environments. In fact, Zander Juice, not a pitch, but Xander juice was invented because a woman came to me and said I'm getting road rage. She was a medical professional that owned clinics in the Pacific Northwest. And driving to those clinics back and forth between Portland and Washington into Oregon, Washington, she said, the road rage is going to kill me. I'm going to become Michael Douglas in Falling down and I'm going to end up with a gun to either my head or a trucker's head if this continues. And so. Right. So making a GABA urgic, a GABA centric solution to people that you could take and instantaneously feel the chill was really important. So we're dealing with those, those factors, these environmental stress factors. Bad air, bad food, poor food. Right. Poor eating habits as a result of our energy deficit that we don't know how to manage necessarily very well. And then there's the caustic things from radio, television, any kind of our inputs that we don't manage very well sometimes. I was a, I was a radical Jesus freak back in the 80s. And I mean that with love, like, I mean for love to all people that have had this conversion experience and know what that's about or what it's like. And though I don't necessarily ascribe to that now I do really, really have a huge appreciation for the disciplines that I developed in making sure that the music I listened to had positive, uplifting, supportive lyrics or music behind it. That the things that I spoke of and the. The conversations I had were uplifting and positive, not critical and right and hammering. All of those factors combine, and once we've built them up, we become toxic. And I can't emphasize how important it is for us to systematically remove every element of toxicity in our lives. And in doing so, you will see a rise in your ability to both confront life and to embrace life and spirit with every one of those eliminations.

Wow. There's. There's two really, really big things that you mentioned. The first one was having this reciprocal loop between taking things like the Xamner juice or having your acetylcholine boosted, having the hardware actually supported in the right way. It's a conversation mark of chicken or egg, right? So if we want to have a healthy life, then yes, we do need to have a toxic or at least mitigated toxicity as much as possible. But also, there are some things that use almost like a scaffolding, right? Like nootropics, where they come in. They're a scaffolding. They allow us to show up in situations where maybe before, in that situation, we actually would block love or we would, because of a behavioral pattern, bring anger, whatever it is. So is it a question of chicken or egg? When it comes to nootropics and brain health and really choosing our mood, I think that's what this is really about. We can choose our freaking mood if we want to, if we have the desire to, but we have to be supported in our facility and our faculty to actually choo our mood.

It state development and state refinement and state selection. State meaning state of mind. Yes, are really the core of what we developed. We didn't develop things just to give you cognitive enhancement. That's a. Almost a byproduct of what we did. What we did is we said, and I've got to get a huge amount of credit to Matt Gallant, who purchased thousands of dollars of our products and did deep research and did. Literally. He was showing me, in fact, just recently, we went through some of it. He was showing me these Google Docs of all of the research he did on everything we made and what it was made of and how it worked and any of the things that I talked about. And it was great. And what you know, in that discovery was hold it. The formula was remove the crap. Replace the issues that human Beings our physiology and neurology are facing. Replace it with the things that it needs, that it. That takes care of those. That crap. And. And it's. It's Steve Martin and the Jerk, right? It's from. To shinola, right? Yeah. Pop says that's.

I love that.

And this is shinola, right? Yeah. And so in that you've got it, you've got to recognize that you don't just. Just eliminating the stuff is good. Eliminating the stuff and giving you, like you said, a scaffolding or, you know, a ladder or an instrument, a power tool that's going to get you to that state better, faster and more efficiently and. And is going to help you create a thing called neurogenesis, hypercritical to this, where you've got new blooms of neurons. And what you're doing is you're programming those neurons to say, this state of positivity or love or critical thinking or faster thinking or Right or. Or the dopaminergic kind of this reward. You can program that so that you can get it easier and faster, even without the nootropics. I'm not trying to make you an addict to my stuff. I'm trying to help you get to a state that you can call on demand, no matter what's going on in your life. Make you. I call it becoming fault tolerant or indomitable. I want you to become an indomitable human being. Right. And I mean human being. Yeah. Because once you're indomitable, all of the crap that. That is gonna. You're gonna face on the way to whatever the next life is, you're gonna be able to do better, more elegantly and with love. If you've ever, like. I've. I. You practice any kind of meditation, Josh.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I. I was really lucky in. In when I was 8 years old is I started transcendental meditation, a form of. That was kind of a byproduct that one of my school assistant. School, you know, school assistant in grade school taught me how cool was that? Right? And, and, and the box breathing exercises and, and getting a mantra, counting your breaths, all of those things became just a core. And it was the only thing that actually helped me sleep at night because my active mind was going crazy. Getting yourself into this state, Right? That's my first state of the day. My first state of the day is one of peace, love, harmony and joy and excitement about what I get to do today, not what I have to do today, what I get to do today. And that makes A huge difference in how I approach everything else. Because instead of things coming at me, the crap that I've got to deal with, it's the stuff I want to deal with, I get to deal with. Because what I get out of that is some magic, often magic. I could not even define meeting you is that kind of magic. It's that magic of going, wow, I just met a souljourner on this trail that we're going on together that is expanding my ability to do the work that I was called to do, spiritually called to do. I mean, how cool is that, right?

It's so cool. There's an amalgam, though. With your corporate background, your entrepreneurial background, your business background, all the different skill sets, Mark, that you had to accumulate, you're an amalgam of those states, and so you're an amalgam of those tools. So you bring that to a situation where, you know, because of Tish leaving the world in the way she did, it's all the fuel you'll ever need. You understand on a very visceral soul level what the world needs, because you yourself have received the contrast of something that most people could never create. What you created from that place. Do you ever think about that when you're walking on the trail meeting soldiers like me?

What I think about is how freaking fortunate I am. I'm the fortunate son, right, that that spirit or universe called me to be able to do this stuff. And that from the time I was very young, my curiosity about life and how things. Work. Work. Would suddenly be manifest in the current, in the present. And with that amalgam, right, of technology curiosity and biochemical curiosity. It was my first chemistry set when I was six years old.

You just happened to have that at the desk in the studio. Your first chemistry set.

It's inspiring because if it wasn't for that. And there's a picture of me somewhere in. In a onesie as a little kid in a. In, you know, those little. Those little one piece jammies opening. Just delighted. Just so excited. Opening my Christmas present and getting a chemistry set. And, you know, it's that. So that I, I couldn't have, like. You couldn't reverse engineer our lives. No, you couldn't. If you looked at the, at the, the. At the journey that you've made from your childhood to now, right? There's no freaking way that you would be here doing this, had you, right? There's like, there's this. The chance that me, a high school dropout, right, with a deep science background, would Be making the most powerful nootropic stacks customized and personalized to every individual in the world that you can't get there from. You know, here, from there are. And yet for some reason, the ping ponging off of the various guardrails that have been put up for me, spiritually put up for me, that have guided me on this journey and let me meet the most brilliant people in the world. I'm not the most brilliant person in the world. I've been fortunate to be meeting them. Every freaking day I am surrounded by these people. Every Tuesday, I get on a call with seven PhDs and another 10 or 12 PhD candidates and they take the insights that I've been aggregating and they go, here we're going to build a test for this, this, this, this and this. And we're going to make sure the science backs up the concept or the prospect. You and I are super lucky that we get the opportunity to play in this game.

Yes.

Because it literally is. Right. And next week I'll be releasing something new that's gonna, it's gonna, it'll blow your mind. Not because I created it it, but because a whole bunch of aggregate knowledge flowed into this place that this, this R and D lab that I get to work in. And we've been able to aggregate the value of that to people and be able to upgrade that wetware, to upgrade the os. Right. And to build on this platform.

I like that you mentioned the game, Mark. You said we're in the game. Aren't we lucky we get to be in the game? And it's interesting if you're watching with us on YouTube, Mark actually looks like he's in a game. He looks like he's in a simulation. Like we're both in a hologr. I think about what messes us up in the game. Like, for example, if I'm playing Monopoly and I start getting angry that my opponent is stacking, you know, all the expensive real estate. If I get angry in life, if I get triggered, essentially. And look, we've done a lot of different deep dives with different guests. Dr. John Gray, Kyra Bobinet, people that are like that. Their whole life's work is about studying the brain and how we work as human beings, how we interrelate to one another. But the question, the ultimate question is when we experience a trigger, when we have, quote, quote, a negative trigger, it does something on a hormonal cascade for us. Right. And it's related specifically to cortisol. So I think about whether somebody and this is why, Mark, I don't watch scary movies. I don't believe in horror movies. I don't watch them. I don't want that toxicity in my brain. I just don't want it. Life has enough horror and craziness in it. I don't need to get excited and watch it on a screen. So when we have this cortisol experience and we go through this experience of being a trig, being in a trigger, I know, based on the work I've done, and maybe you do too, that that trigger is actually our greatest and most potent teacher that is calling us forward to be more loving, to be more open, to be more compassionate. That's one way of awareness. That's one way of consciousness. What happens when we experience a trigger? Based on your research as a scientist and the team that you work with and the products you create, what actually is going on inside of us when we experience that trigger from a cortisol perspective, can you paint that picture?

Yeah. That hormone cascade is a really scary hormone cascade. So one of the things that happens is of course your, your heart is trying to leap out of your chest. Right? You're getting that, that adrenal rush.

Yeah.

And the way that, the way that your body tries to mitigate that is as you probably know, most of the serotonin in your body is created in your gut. All right? So if you have good bowel flora, 90, anywhere from 90 to 95%, 92, 94% is roughly the amount of serotonin that's created there. And then there's a vagus nerve that then triggers. Right. The production of serotonin in the brain. So what happens then is that in order to kind of mitigate the cortisol, you're going to have a GABA and a serotonin dump. It's going to go in there to try to tell your heart you don't need to beat out of your chest. There's no tiger here. Right. And that, that rush that you just received is now going to deplete your body of necessary neuro. Neurotransmitters. And those neurotransmitters, because they just got occupied, they just got used up in this event, and now you've got to recover those. So that instantaneous fight or flight response, now that your body recognizes that you're not dying, is now going, oh, I need to go replace those neurotransmitters. So your performance level is going to dive while that happens. You're going to be foggy brained, unmotivated and still a little scared. But the little scared is now going to go hide in a corner, not go take up your sword and go fight. And so when that's happening, you're losing the key components necessary for you to perform as a human being. The other side of that is you're building a neural pathway snap, a trigger that you're going to respond to. This is PTSD 101. So you need to create an overriding. You want to create a couple things. One, you go, you have to recognize that the situation is happening, Recognize it and put it out here. It's not in you, it's out here. Right? So let's, let's remove it from our internals. And then a couple of things. By the way, this is kind of a routine that I do when I'm under these situations that look unsolvable. So I've got this horrendous situation that might. May be occurring. What I do personally that I found extremely valuable, and this is a state change, state optimization, state selection process is I look at the situation not with me being in it, but with me observing me being in it. I remove all of the pain, anguish, horror, trauma from it immediately. I've removed those from it. And I don't try to rate it as good, bad or otherwise. And what I do on top of that is I have a mantra that I say. I say, you know what? Great things happen to me. I'm really, really fortunate in my life. Great things happen to me. I wonder what great thing is going to come from this event. And I don't. Again, I don't rate it as good or bad. Had. I just know that as in the aggregate, overall my life has been on a pretty good positive trajectory. And I've had some happen, bro. So, so when I recognize that and I don't give power to the situation, then that allows me to make a much more conscious decision to just flow, to just go with it. To be a ninja, to, to think of a Tai Chi like to, you know, Kwai Chang Cane in the, in the TV series Kung Fu, right? Where he just, just, you know, he didn't, he didn't beat people up. He just let gently bent them into the places they need to be to get out of the way so that he wasn't hurting anybody, but he was getting the job done.

It's like emotional aikido, almost like in the Matrix where Neil was bending backwards and the bullets were going by him. It's. I love that so much. Now look, you can only Say that, Mark, in my opinion, you can only say that because you have built your hardware. You have built, Built a scaffolding of loving support, of neurochemistry support around your hardware that enables you to think and behave in that way. That's the only reason that you can have that and your life experiences and your spiritual path. That's the recipe for how you're showing up today. So this is a big part of it, right? How we support ourselves on a hardware level is really half or more of that equation.

I gotta show you something real quick. You ready? We'll probably be launching this at Christmas, but what you have right now, which you'd mentioned was upbeat, which is our kind of our. This is our primary kind of mood positive, mood enhancing, serotonin boosting product, right? It's called upbeat Illness. We package them in test tubes. We package them in test tubes because I started my first company and I funded it with test tube babies. So. So I did.

I'm sorry, what? Wait, hold on. You can't just say that nonchalant and not give us a tiny bit of context. Like, what do you. For, for those of you listening, on the pod, in your car, Mark just held up a little t. Miniature baby inside of a glass vial.

So I was in the Air Force. The front cover of Life magazine came out and said, the 10 year anniversary of the first in vitro fertilization. And I called my stepdad, who owned a clinical laboratory in Portland, Oregon, and said, jack, I need venture capital. When he got up off the floor laughing because I'm his high school dropout stepson, he goes, so what is it you're doing again? And I said, well, have you seen Life, Maggie? Of course he had it on his desk because he's in the medical field, right? And he saw this front cover and it had like a Photoshop mock up of the first test tube baby. So he sent me 2,000 test tubes. I put little plastic babies in them and I sold them at mini marts in central California. And I funded my first company from that. So it was my first bootstrap event to. I sold enough of these to buy a laser to start a laser technology company, Me. So anyhow, that's.

That is so cool. Okay, well, that's why they come in the little vials like this. And look, I'm, I'm, I'm. Look, I know that y' all are probably feeling. Josh, you keep mentioning these products like, what is going on, dude? You keep showing us the products. It's because I actually use them. Everything that's at the store page, Josh trent.com forward/store. It's because my family and I actually use them now. Is there any reason that somebody wouldn't want to take Nootropics? Is there any reason why? I mean personally I feel like I'm very sensitive. Like if I do plant medicines or if I do anything at all, I just need the tiniest little dose. Is there any reason, Mark, why somebody would not be a candidate for Nootropics? Because I know you guys customize the stack based on their emotional intelligence. So talk about that a little bit.

So when in development of this, I did over 3,000 prototypes. So this was not just a throw a bunch of stuff in a, in a capsule and put it in a jar and put on the market is again, I'm working, I'm working with. I had 400,000 customers at the time that were my software clients who used our brainstorming software to brainstorm. So I got a subset of them, a little over a thousand, and said I'm going to send you, are you willing to take test tubes of crappy tasting neurochemical precursors and extracts and tell me how they make you perform and fill out a form online with a data data. So I did it right. So 3,000 of those kind of formulations, they didn't receive all 3,000 of those. They received a subset because some I tried and I had a small group in, in the northern Washington area that tried that said there's no way you're going to get that up to anybody, it's going to make them sick. And so but through that 3,000 we found that one of the keys to making an effective stack or which is a collection of different nutrients and chemical, you know, neurochemical precursors and extracts was customization. When we didn't customize, 30 to 42% of the people got a really positive response. The rest of them either got a neutral or a very small amount would get a negative cognitive performance response. When I started customizing, we got over 92 and sometimes over 97% positive response because we matched it to their neurology, their weight, their sex, their age, their hormone development, any of the meds they might have been on, any nutrient supplements they're on, how often they exercise, what kinds of exercise they do, what their goals are. That was a huge one. You'll see there's sliders at the end of our, of our customization form. You say, I want more of this, I want more of this, I want less of this. I Want more of this in terms of the way you feel or the way you operate. And then we adjust our formulation for every capsule, every powder and every spray specifically for you. So you're not getting anybody else's formula.

One of the things I love is you can actually list on the intake if you're sensitive to caffeine, which I am. So when I got my supplements, I noticed that they were like almost caffeine free or very low caffeine, which I love because I'm, I've had a war with coffee, as I mentioned, for like two decades. So I actually don't do coffee and I give myself mark, like a tiny espresso if I want to treat or something. But, but I love this because, man, look, you're not going to find this anywhere else. You're just not like, I've never come across something where you could actually go through an emotional intelligence and an intake process and literally have something sent to your house that's built for your neurology, for your physiology. How long did that process take? What did you learn? I'm fascinated. What did you learn from people? Is there a slant that most people need? In other words, do most people tend to go more towards the upbeat or the apex or what are some of the key products that most people tend to lean towards based on their intake?

So it's funny. So Focus Savagery, which we're, I think we're calling now super focus or hyper focus, which is our, our solution. Let me see here, let me grab it here, hold on. So this, this, which was kind of our Adderall alternative, was our natural alternate, was, seemed to be, seemed to be the big one. But here's the interesting thing. What I didn't know or what I didn't anticipate and then, and then there was Nectar X and Power solution, which are our drinkables, right? These are both drinkables. You mix them up.

I haven't done those yet.

What's great about these is that you're self regulating because you mix them up with roughly a liter of water, 24 to 32 ounces of water. And because you can vary the amount of intake, you're varying the experience, you're adjusting the experience throughout your day and oftentimes they'll last for two or three days, one dose of that. So, so, but we found that, that what people were looking for, the, the expectation, which was set pretty high thanks to Bradley Cooper and friends, the expectation was that you're going to feel like this limitless experience and we could get that we could absolutely give people that limitless experience. The challenge is, is that is a hyper vigilant, hyper aware, hyper dopaminergic experience.

Yeah.

A lot of people operate best when they have a more GABA and serotonin centric experience, meaning they're chill. Right. And they're in the zone. They're kind of in flow state. And that seemed to be much more effective for certain people or they had the craft, whatever it is that they do for a living. That craft requires them to have a quiet mind that they can build on top of and some and versus a, a highly dopaminergic mind that uses recirculating dopamine, which would be something that would be much more tied to, towards an Adderall type experience. Right. And I mean that by drug induced Adderall, not our hyper focus stuff. Sure. Is the problem with that is. And what my employees would tell me, I, I would do Adderall about twice a month. Back when I was doing high tech companies back in the early 90s or early 2000s, I did it for about four years and I only do it once or twice a month because when I did take it, I would get a boatload of stuff done. But when my employees would try to interface with me, they would come into my office, I would bark at them. I had no emotional intelligence. I was not connected. And my sweetheart would go, I'm out of here, you're an asshole. And so that was not a very positive experience for me. So I found that there are ways to do that again. Right. We've got the, we got bringing up not just dopamine, but let's bring up some GABA and let's bring up some serotonin on that to make it so that you're not over clocking that specific neurochemical to the point where it's so dominant that you don't have any of the other attributes you need to be a human being because it's really, really important. So yeah, anyhow, that was kind of the direction. So we found that. But one of the things. So when I developed Apex, the goal with Apex was is how do you keep people very wakeful but not stimulated? How do you keep them aware? Right. But not vigilant? How do you keep them energized but not, you know, not, not having that buzz from caffeine.

Kind of like the barky edge where they have no patience, but they have a lot of energy. I've, I've been there myself.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh God. It's such an uncomfortable and probably one of the reasons maybe you dumped caffeine or coffee.

Totally.

As a.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. It's just. Yeah, yeah, I know. It looks good. It looks good. If you're, if, if you're, you know, you're watching Office Space, I think it looks really good. Lumberg, I think, is a great example of that. Right.

I'm curious.

I'm.

I'm curious here. When people take. And I know we're winding down. So you've been really awesome here sharing the science and the spirit and the story and all the good things, man. We really appreciate you. By the way, if y' all are listening and you're like, okay, I want to look this up. Like, I don't even have to go to the end of the episode, which we are going to talk about something really special at the end. Just go to joshtrant.com forward/nootopia. And can you spell newtopia for everyone?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. N O O, T, O, P I, A.

Okay. So that's the correct spelling. One thing I've been really curious about is when we talk about neurogenesis and we talk about synaptic pruning, we talk about carving new pathways in the forest. Essentially all of our behaviors are like trying to make meaning and love and presence out of a huge forest. And we're making trails in that forest in our brain. So the neuroplasticity or the paths that we continue to walk shock when we start taking supplementation like this that is literally helping us to carve new pathways in the brain. We're actually getting a hardware upgrade from this stuff that's customized to you. When people are doing that, what are the long term health benefits of this? In other words, we're reversing our brain's deficiencies. We're up leveling mental stamina, mental endurance. But what's really going on there in the long term, if somebody, let's say, did this for a year or two years and then they stopped, would there still be the elements of protection and of up leveling in their cognition?

Yeah. And you know that you cannot separate the brain in the biology. Right. And the brain is the master conductor for everything else that's going on in your biology. So one of the cool things about it, and one of the things you may notice over time is that the things that used to be painful or distracting because of the amount of cognitive load that they presented to you. Like, if you've ever had somebody come in and go, I Have no time for that now or I can't think about that. Right. There's. Obviously, there's probably some truth to that, but the other side is, what if you had the cognitive performance empowerment to be able to go, I can deal with that. And it's not going to pull away from my ability to accomplish this other thing I have to accomplish today or these other things I need to accomplish. That's. That's the added benefit. When you have more bandwidth, when you have more intellectual bandwidth. Right. And mental capacity, it reflects in every area of your body. Instead of having this radical hormone flood fight or flight during a. What would be a perceived negative event, you can look at the event without all of that emotional overhead. Because instead of your head thinking, oh, crap, this event's happening. It's going to wipe me out and I'm not going to be effective or whatever in my. The next thing I have to get to said, you can look at it, almost laugh at it and go, all right, bring it, bro, bring it. Let's do this thing. And you know it's Neo when he's. When he's doing this. Right? Right?

Yeah.

And Morpheus right when he's. Come on, come on, let's do this.

Mark, I can't tell you there's not a podcast or two that goes by where we don't talk about the Matrix. This movie is just, like, woven into my life. And I find that it's. That the story of the hero and the story of Neo is really your story and my story. That's the reason why it sticks to our soul. Like, we. We watch a film like that, and it just touches a part of us that we know is there that gets activated and reactivated. And something that you wrote on your Facebook, actually, I saw this. You said, is your life by choice or by chance? And when I read that, I was like, okay, it's definitely by choice. But there is an element of mystery in our life. What do you make of that? Why do you put a quote like that on your Facebook page? Is your life by choice or by chance?

I think a lot of people are buffeted by their lives or through their lives. In other words, they're bouncing off of all these things that are happening, and they're not really poised in a direction or making an intention for their lives. And when I joined the Air force, I was 19 years old, and I wrote three things I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to learn how to juggle, I wanted to learn how to play guitar, and I wanted to learn. I wanted to save enough money to start a company. And, and within the first two years, I had a six year enlistment. Within the first two years, I reflected back on that and I go, holy crap, I've done that already. Like, I still had four years left, four years to expand on. I had to rewrite my goals because I had already accomplished my goals. A lot of people and I didn't know. All I'd read was my brother had read Think and Grow Rich. And he said, mark, before you go do this journey, you need to write down some goals that are meaningful and important to you. You. And I think that, that so many people end up. And by the way, this is not blaming or, or finger pointing. We all get into this where life is accelerating so fast that we just feel like we're just being, you know, we're the, we're the, the tail wag and the dog situation.

Yeah.

And. And there's at one point you've, you, you get to. Or you have to stop and say, I need to own my life. I need to be the right. I need to be in charge of this concert that's going on. So it doesn't. Doesn't sound like a cacophony. It sounds like a beautiful. It sounds like, like Four Seasons or. It sounds like something I want to listen to.

Yeah.

And when that happens, the thing that I found is that the people and events and technologies and wisdoms suddenly start showing up, and they show up faster and faster and more meaningful and eventually again, it's that ninja moment where you're going, I'm traveling through life. And it's almost like you're creating a vortex. There's. That's pulling those things, those events and people and technologies and opportunities into your life. And there's so much abundance at that moment. And if you don't freak out and get scared and run from it, right. If when the opportunity shows up, you don't go, eh, right. And you look at it and go, wow, this thing is scary. Awesome. I think that my spirit is being called to do something that it. That may be fearful on the front end, but if you look at all of the things, if you look at the people involved, the quality of the people involved, right. If you look at what the intention and the purpose is, if you look at what it could mean in the long term. Dude, I moved from the Portland, Oregon area. Like, I've always been a west coast boy. Newport Beach, California.

Yeah, me too. Forty years in California, you know, the.

Gig, man, and suddenly you're going, okay, I'm going to make a shift that is a little bit, maybe scary, a little bit frightening. But if you re. If we re. Compose it and say hold it, I wonder what cool stuff is going to happen from this radical move I'm making. Could it be the most badass thing in my life? I'm sure Joe felt the same way when, you know, right when. When Rogan went, oh, I'm going to Austin. Right? Yeah, from. And, you know, and. And, you know, and I just. I just spent some time with Ben Greenfield. And, you know, Ben's moving, you know, to Idaho, right? He's moving to this big lake area in Idaho and stuff. There's. You go through these events and you. And you can either embrace them with love and watch how that pulls everything into you, or you can embrace it with fear and see how that repels what could be the most incredible opportunities in your life.

I choose the lack by choice or by chance, really. It's. It's back to a point where I asked you about how the brain works and how we show up. It's the chicken and egg conversation, which is such a paradox, and it's a spiritual paradox that we've explored a lot on this podcast. If I have the mindset like you just shared, where I'm in the vortex and I'm doing everything I can to just surrender to what's around me, surrender to the experience to be possible. What's possible if I just let go and stop trying to control or force. One of the reasons, Mark, why we changed this podcast name this year, we went through a massive death and Rebirth. Dude. On 222 22. It's kind of a cool numerology thing. We let go of the word wellness force. Now the podcast is wellness and wisdom, which is what you're sharing today. You're sharing with us wisdom not from a place of force. And this is why I love even more what I do now than. Than what I did for the first six years because I allowed myself to die. I allowed myself to go through this identity disillusionment, which really, on the other side of that was something so beautiful that would have never happened if I was just living my life by white knuckling and not being open to the mystery and the chance of things that happen. So, dude, I've so enjoyed this podcast for so many different reasons. Yes, I do have some upbeat in my system. I also have some call of genius in my system as well. And I'm so excited to test out even more of the science stuff and Even be my own little tinker, my own little scientist on the road ahead.

So pretty, pretty soon, I'm going to be shipping you your next apex or upbeat or brain flow in these beautiful little containers that we've developed specifically for these events so that you get this right.

Very cool.

We're trying to upgrade everything to make it so that. So when people receive our stuff, every component of the experience feeds their soul, and they go, wow, I'm not only taking something that changes my soul, changes my brain, improves my physiology and neurology, but every touch point on it is something that's warm and fuzzy and light loving.

So, well, man, we definitely feel that from you. So it's been a total honor. And as we say goodbye, answer this question for us, for us to ponder on, for us to take into our lives. When we're done watching and being here with this podcast, at the center of a lot of things we've talked about today, there's this mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. And I would also say how that bleeds into financial. It's the five sides of the wellness pentagon that I teach to my students, that we have in our BREATHE program that I've been talking about for years now. Now, in the center of that is you, and in the center of you is wholeness, and the center of you is wellness. How would you define that? How would Mark define wellness? Living a life well, what does that mean to you?

It's by being fully available. Like, if I'm super healthy, my availability to make an impact is so much greater than if I'm not. If I'm not, it's that you almost become narcissistically be involved in yourself when you're sick, trying to repair yourself. And you'll find this with people that have been through a lot of. A lot of counseling, a lot of training. Right? Is that. Is that instead of. Is that they. They. If they don't get healthy, they don't have the resource to be able to do outreach without the fear that it's taking, taking from them. So abundance comes from our health. Until we're healthy, healthy, it's hard to have that extra abundance or we start giving to the point where we get sick again. So it's really important, I think, to make sure that that self is whole spiritually and physically, so that self can actually give spiritually in such a much bigger way. The waves that we create are going to go on forever. It's important that we do good, healthy, loving waves.

Mic drop, y'. All. You heard it from Mark Mark, thank you for being on the show. The surprise, the loving discount that Mark is giving us is Josh 10. So all you have to do is go over to newtopia.com or you can head over to joshtrend.com forward/nootopia. There's some really special things for you there. The code is Josh10. Mark, thank you for the generosity. I know how much goes into building a business. We appreciate that. So the code is Josh10. Thank you, Mark, for coming on the podcast.

Oh, thank you, brother Josh, you're awesome. Awesome. Really appreciate it. As does Chastity, as does Augie, my dog.

It's a family situation, y'. All. Okay, so until Mark and I see you again, we're talking about this@joshtrant.com forward slash podcast and joshtrant.com forward slash community. So from my heart to yours, until Mark and I see you again on another podcast or out there in the world, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for watching the podcast. I appreciate you being here. If you haven't done so already, click the subscribe button and the little notification bell so you never miss any of this free weekly content delivered from my heart with care right to yours. If you love this video, you'll love any of the videos on this page. Just click the one you want to watch next.