Bryan Johnson: How He Is Getting Biologically Younger, Selling His Company for $800 Million, and More

You said earlier you said I wanted to make a certain amount of money by age thirty. What was your number? What was your target? On the lower end, it was seven million dollars. I had built out my spreadsheet model and assumed a certain rate of interest and basically said If I make a certain amount of money, this is an annuity that will be good enough for my entire life, assuming

I don't need capital to do anything. Just if it's time like I'm writing or something. Uh then I Do something in the world. I have mapped out something like a hundred and fifty, three hundred million. As a

A basis that would get me started on that path. We're officially live, so uh Brian I've been messaging you for like six or eight months now, but basically I'll give like a very brief background and and you can kinda like Tell us a little bit more, because uh inevitably I'll I'll miss something. But you started a bunch of stuff. The most Probably the the biggest thing is brain tree. I think you bootstrap that, right?

I did. So you bootstrap that, sold it for like something like eight hundred million dollars to PayPal. You guys also bought Venmo. Which I think is like the greatest acquisition, one of the best acquisitions of all time,'cause you bought it for kinda nothing compared to what it is now. And then you're n you've done a bunch of other things. You've done kernel, which is interesting, but you and you had this a fun that's kind of interesting. But the thing that I started reading was your new thing called Blueprint, which The the kind of the I'm kind of an idiot, and so the stupid way of describing it is like

You have your biological age. And then you have your chronological age. A chronological chronological age is just how many years old you are. Uh, and then you have your biological, which is it measures bunch of Different. things like your organs, your blood, and you're basically trying to reverse your biological age.

Faster. then the chronological age goes up, which inevitably means you live forever. I mean, is that is that basically it and you're blogging and like sharing everything along the way, is that right? Great job. Mm. So there I'm Brian, what is your chronological age and what is your current biological age?

I left my mother's womb forty five years ago. Mm. Yeah. Uh biologically I'm

A few hundred different ages. And so you for example, if you're looking at the age of your heart, you can characterize The age. of the heart to a few dozen markers. You can do the same thing with other parts of the body. So you're actually Clutch and of

some very large number of markers because different parts of the body age at different speeds and then your Life choices and environment. Also affects that. So I wanna ask you all about this blueprint thing'cause I think it's amazing. Uh

But can I ask you a few questions about Braintree first? Please. So Braintree, I mean, like uh you know, you guys are owned by PayPal now. Another uh com or a another competitor to yours, I think, is is Stripe, which is you know, these are like high tech companies, you know, pretty complicated things. How on earth do you bootstrap a business like that? I mean, I think by like year three or year four, you're doing like eight or nine million in revenue. I mean you kinda you guys kinda took off. So I understand like how you were able to bootstrap it. Boot trap it, once you got to maybe ten million in revenue, but how on earth do you make something like that from scratch?

I was I guess it started when I was twenty one. Uh I decided that I I wanted to try to do something meaningful for humanity. I grew up reading a whole bunch of biographies about people who had done things their time and place and I admired people who tried to identify the thing on the horizon that was barely reachable. During their lifetimes and they went after it.

And at the age of 21, I didn't know what that was and I didn't know how I could do it. And so I thought you know Given my option set, I might as well I'll become an entrepreneur, I'll make a whole bunch of money by the age of thirty And then at that point I'll try to go after something. And so it was a naive contemplation of how to go about doing things. I'd grown up in a small town

Basically, you know, with my grandpa on a farm. I didn't meet um my I didn't meet an engineer. Until I was twenty one or twenty two years old. So very much a um a farm boy like uh race in a deep really deeply religious community.

And so I did a bunch of startups and I just accidentally fell into payments. Uh because I I was building a startup, I was struggling to pay my bills. I had a child at the time.

And I would do anything for money. I applied for sixty jobs. Nobody would even contemplate hiring me. And so I found this job to sell credit card processing services door to door. And so I agreed to do it. And it was a hundred percent commission and I became the company's number one salesperson uh in a in a matter of months doing it part time while building my startup. And so I just accidentally stumbled into payments and learned there was this big opportunity. Paypal had

grown up through the internet, but they had stopped. uh really innovating for a couple years. And so developers didn't have the tools they liked. And so I started Braintree And we landed a big deal early on with Open Table. They Or accepting credit cards as a uh a form of

to increase the likelihood the person would show up for the reservation. But they didn't want to store the credit card data because they had compliance issues. And so we built out a custom solution for them. that allowed us to store credit card data on our side instead of them. So they didn't have the compliance to still accept credit cards. And so from scratch we built this payment system.

Uh first for them, then we expand it out to more general merchants. And we got a few customers like Airbnb, GitHub. Uh Uber. We helped Uber do their uh I uh no

Like uh the payment experience where you get in the car. You arrive at your destination, you leave the car. No exchange of payment information, no signing of receipts, no printing out receipts. We start doing a few things like that and we um really made our headway into

high tech companies going very quickly, they prefer to use our software. You just said a bunch of things that were all super interesting. First of all, you're kinda like Elon Musk without the fame? Yeah, like you had your kind of payment. He he had X dot com and PayPal, you you had your payments thing. Now you're doing like a brain interface and stuff like that. You do these moonshot projects trying to live forever, that sort of stuff. So I think you're you're a fascinating dude.

You said something about door to door sales and on the pod we've talked about this before, which is uh Yeah. Uh you know, our producer who's not here today'cause having a baby. Um, you know, he's Mormon and he did his mission and we talked about, you know, what that's like. Uh, we've talked about, you know, Cut Co and some of these like, you know, door to door textbook companies where It really breeds this like

Amazing entrepreneur because you have to learn sales, you have to be able to work hard, face rejection all the time, you know, that sort of thing. And it's like this um rite of passage. I think if you come out the other side of that and you were successful at door sales, I I would bet on you With any role in my company if you're successful at door to door sales. Uh, but I've never done it. So I'm just talking out my ass here. Is that Accurate in your view and how you know it. I guess how do you think about door to door sales and how did you become the number one

When you don't seem like the most uh You know, charismatic, you know, guy. I mean I don't know if you had the kind of the same haircut back then, but like I don't know. I don't know what did it for you. That's funny. I mean it's I guess the

one thought on this, you know, I my my kids are nineteen, seventeen and thirteen. And They're currently going through these important life decisions on what they study in school and uh what they try to do. I'm doing everything I can to help them

Focus on CS math and physics. Like these are the tools that you these are the languages you want to be fluent in. to be architects of the future. And

In many ways my choice of doing the door to door cells was just a It was my hacker attempt at paying the bills with the child. while I buy time before I start something new.

And it was out of desperation. It was like I was seeking it out. And so it was just a and it was also a case just dealing with the reality of my skills that I had grown up and just farm like community deep people to just didn't have any engineering background. And so Yeah.

The thing that I enjoyed the most about the sales was it's not doing high pressure sales tactics and it's not trying to Manipulate somebody. It's not trying to perfect a skill. It's about getting in and figuring out the system. Like what is really going on? And if you

If you jump into the world of payments in the year two thousand seven when I started this. It was defined by deep distrust. Yeah. It was a game where credit card payments is really expensive. And when a mur when a business owner gets their credit card

monthly invoice, it's so complicated they have no idea what's going on. And the providers make it even more complicated in how they report things. And so it creates this opportunity for people to be extremely deceptive and create high commissions. So in looking at that system opportunity number one Be honest.

Be transparent, be honest and be trustworthy. And then number two is because there was so much skepticism on this. Businesses didn't know how to differentiate Why should I do this? Work with this company versus that company.

When in reality most companies were mostly the same. There was it's very hard to differentiate in payments. And so two is making that known. So again, the the customer has a very clear understanding. And then three, it's just being reliable and and competent. Like that you know that when

the customer tracks with you and your team, they say What? An amazing experience. So it was Once you figure out

How the system worked. It was very easy to solve. And so I would just walk in. And like the moment you walk in the store, they can tell. you're not a customer by the way you're dressed and maybe the way you're walking, whatever. And they immediately hate you.

And so You have to overcome this animosity from the get go. And so I would take out a hundred dollar bill. I'd say, I will I will uh give you this uh for one minute of your time. If you say no to me, you can keep it. And

I may be like all right, whatever. This sounds fun. What do you ack? And I would just walk them through these basic principles like here's what's going on, here's what they're doing. I'm really no different than anyone else. You're just gonna find something clean and transparent and reliable with me. And most people be like

Okay, I just like I just want it to be done. Like I don't want to deal with any more deception. I don't want to have to change again. I don't want these machine leases. And so it was it was really just again it's system Mm. deconstruction and reconfiguration.

And it was the skill set that I tried to build again and again through every business I built. Walking into a A new world. And try to figure out what was really going on and then how to deconstruct it and then maneuver within it. Product just like an agency where you were getting your friends to help install these credit card processors or

You know, what what was that early V one or brain tree because you said you're not an engineer. Wha wh what did that look like? Because this is pretty complicated stuff, it seems. The first product was for open table. It was just allowing someone to make a reservation, put in their credit card number, and have it stored. So it to the user, it appeared as if I was entering my credit card information. in the open table system. When in fact they're entering it into our system behind the scenes. And so

I had a team of uh engineers, of software engineers do it. And how'd you find that? Um, I had made enough money From selling this stuff door to door. that I could bootstrap it and hire them.

How how much did you make roughly? Did you do it for like a year or something like that to cover the bills and all that? Say create a stash. Eleven months and I remember at a the eleven month mark. My My portfolio of customers were m uh were generating I think it was like fifty nine thousand a month.

of revenue. And I thought that's That's interesting, right? Like I mean, I'm I'm coming from this world where My family, we would decide whether to spend our$5 family date budget on going through a car wash.

Or you know going to go in and get something at a restaurant. Like I we grew up in so in such a frugal Uh. Environment. And then seeing that it was like fifty nine thousand dollars a month. Now I'd always been wanting to build I was

I was not willing to trade my time For money. You know, if someone's going to say, I'll pay you$15 an hour to blank. I didn't want to make that exchange. I wanted to say, I'm willing to take zero. Or an indefinite period of time.

in exchange the opportunity to make a whole lot more. And that was true. Like I didn't make any money until I was really thirty four years old. I was the entire time was working for basically zero. But uh That's when I start seeing that what kind of money you could make in payments on this residual revenue basis.

The fifty nine thousand, that was what you were getting as your residuals, or that's what the company was getting. And they were giving me a cut. Yeah. And so you're getting a cut of that. And so you You're saying these things where you're like, I knew I didn't want to trade time for money, or like, I wanted to like do the biggest like technological breakthrough and I didn't know what that was. So I first decided to make some money and by thirty I'll have that figured out. Um You're saying these things that as a twenty one year old

Most people don't know or have the perspective or wism wisdom to to think that way. Yeah, it's pretty profound. And you're also saying you grow up kind of like on a small farm in a deeply religious community. So it's not like you were surrounded by these other like you know by other technologists or you know uh you know business sort of like mentors. So where is this coming from? Did you re and even this like hundred dollar bill trick, like you know, uh Did you read like how to think and grow rich or like what did you did you read any biographies or books that like change your way, or how the heck did you do this as a small farm boy to like Get this type of thinking in your brain.

I could probably make up an answer. Uh it Seems to me right now. I have no idea. What books do you what biographies you said you read a lot of biographies, what were you reading? That changed uh your life.

Yeah, I've probably read over a hundred Maybe even two hundred biographies at this point. And Uh like for example, I would go on deep dives. of trying to understand certain

World history events like World War Two. And so one interesting biography I read is of a gentleman, uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was uh trying to assassinate Hitler. And so you understand World War Two.

And he was deeply religious. You understand World War Two and Germany. and Nazism through the frame of this individual and his plans to go about and his observations about what other people are doing in the community.

And so I found like these these biographies provided This back door on how to understand. events as they were told to me in school. In school you have this highly compressed version of history of like, all right, everybody look on the same page if we understand these big things that happened. But you really miss out on the nuance and we all know how flawed historical accounts are.

Uh because of Just the nature of of humans and the way People write history. And so these biographies helped me start to Piece together.

An understanding of reality that was much more nuanced. And sometimes contrary to Two primary narratives. So it And um It invites me

To always reject the first narrative that's offered. and understand it not for a factual statement, but for A wishful attempt to be understood. To be accepted.

You said earlier you said I wanted to make a certain amount of money by age thirty. What was your number? What was your target? But on the On the lower end it was seven million dollars. I had built out my spreadsheet model and assumed a certain rate of interest and basically said

If I make a certain amount of money, this is an annuity that will be good enough for my entire life. Assuming I don't need capital to do anything. Just if it's time like I'm writing or something. Uh then I do something in the world. I have mapped out something like a hundred and fifty, three hundred million.

as a a basis that would get me started on that path. When you sold when you were thirty four, right? Yes. And what did you uh what were you able to walk away with? Were you able to hit your your your the north end of your target?

Yeah, I get three hundred million. What is that? You know, you're you're a Yeah. religious farm kid who doesn't know much

in and then in a matter of eleven or twelve years you're able to walk away with, you know, north of three hundred million dollars. What does that feel like and what do you do with that money once it hits your account? You don't seem like a victory dance kind of guy. Wait a second. Uh But true. That's true. That is very true. Oh.

It's sobering. Because You know it's bigger than what you realize. But you don't know in what ways. And so it wasn't the case that I had

a long list of things I wanted to buy. They were just waiting for this cash to come in. I don't think I've spent any money. For a long time. And I think you know looking back now.

Even my Most uh Aggressive expectations on how life would change. Weren't even close. to how significantly my reality would change over the years with uh that event.

Well, what do you mean? What changed? I mean your Your relationship with the world fundamentally changes.

I mean, uh In any relationship. uh there's power dynamics. Of

Well and power and status and No age. There's all sorts of things that that shape human interactions. And

It creates a different entry point for everything. Uh because now We all know this from our experiences, when you engage with people of different powers of different levels. It changes the dynamics of your relationship with them, expectations. Interests.

Rationale. Justifications. It just alters everything. about I mean I remember one of the one of the first stories that I heard Um

Someone shared with me is is Larry Bird. Uh I don't know if it's true, the second third hand, but Larry had a group of good friends that he I went back to saw And he had just made money, I think, signing it for the MBA. He sat down to have dinner with his friends. And Larry's like, you know, I got it.

Don't worry about it. And his friends are great great Larry, it's amazing. Thank you so much. Second time happens. And Everyone's quiet. Assuming Larry's had to get the bill.

He does. third time it's just like of course Larry's gonna pick this up and probably take it somewhere else. And so Larry, from his perspective just like Yeah. Yeah.

the fund was removed because now in instead of me be able to do something be generous with someone I'm now in this expectation and so it deterred him from wanting to interact with people because there was this expectation on him that anything he did There will be this expectation. And so it just it it is a um

I think anyone who's experienced fame or anything of the sort Uh there are these underlying dynamics of human tractions, which are just a reality for everybody. And Uh yeah, it would have been helpful, I think, thinking back. Uh if I could have spoken to somebody

And if they said, Hey, like, let me just share five really important things with you. On what it means to have money. and how you can best navigate this because it it's taken me some time to learn. Well, there's probably gonna be like a hundred fifty thousand people that listen to this. You could be that mentor for them, so What would you say? What are those five things?

But give us three at least. One is Uh transparency of intent. Yeah you know, when when you're with somebody It's very important that you establish why you're doing what you're doing and um

The roles you're gonna play with each other. If it's ambiguous, then it creates complications in your relationship. And so um It's uh It's unpleasant for anyone to be surprised in a relationship of what somebody really wants in the relationship.

So just transparency, like uh we're doing this under these conditions. Um Two, I'd say that. Um Money is not a a resource that is viable for uh necessarily for the things that allows you to acquire

is most valuable for the time. It creates. That you can solve problems. With money. And uh

So utilize it wisely, not on acquiring frivolous things. But on solving fundamental problems of time. And And then three is um There's a weird psychological relationship with it.

Where uh you are not that. And uh it is not you. And to have an identity Independent of that. Because it can get very confusing if you don't maintain those clear boundaries.

What did you so I know that I read that you invested a hundred million dollars into your fund, which you guys didn't have invested in all types of cool stuff, and it seems like you've had some really good outcomes. Um And then you started a a company called Kernel that we can talk about a little a little bit. What did you do with the rest? Did you this is a good question that Sean always asks. He goes, What what do you do at your money? You know, like if you had a pie chart, like where would it be like just boring index funds and bonds? Uh it was Sean for a long time. He was like heavy into crypto and and heavy in cash. What about you? It depends on what your objectives are. I mean, I think

Good advice for me at that point would have been You are an entrepreneur, you're always going to be an entrepreneur. Cast king. Like don't put your money anything that's gonna be illiquid. Uh so there's been times in the past couple of years where

I desperately needed cash and it was not I didn't have liquid levels that I wanted. And so uh liquidity for entrepreneurs is really important. Uh number two is that um Like the the end the movement into West Fund was like okay, wait, I did Range of Venmo.

Primarily a software engineering objective within an established industry of payments. I was moving into science. And the question it uh I was trying to solve. For example Could we build a global biological immune system.

So we all know that if a problem in the world Arises. And that problem can be addressed by software engineers coding their computers. To solve the problem.

We're pretty good at that as a species. If a problem arises in the world That requires the engineering of biology of atoms and molecules and organisms. We're not there. Yeah.

We don't have the ability to deploy millions of people who can just engineer biology. at a moment's notice and solve problems. Like is the coral reef Dying because the water's too acidic. Uh we need carbon capture blank. We need, you know, whatever the the problem is.

is I wanted to invest in companies that would basically serve as the foundational building block for humanity. of building this infrastructure so we could actually engineer with the reliability. Atoms, molecules, and organisms. So if I wrote this in this blog post, like if for example a pandemic happened. It would be amazing if we had these capabilities.

to build up the biological infrastructure of detection. Vaccine creation. you know, remediation and whatnot. And that actually hand that actually was true. Uh Ginco BioWorks one of my first investments. I end up working on the MRA vaccine. But it was just this idea of like if

We've Done very well mastering. programming. Bits. We are emerging now powerfully in the engineering of biology. And so some of the companies like we are doing synthetic biology.

engineering. Uh one company is doing they're storing information. on d using DNA. So instead of a hard drive made of the material we're custom to They store it on DNA'cause that's nature's hard drive. Another company is doing nanotech, building

these structures atom by atom, like literally assembling them like Legos. And so the companies and they've been successful. Like some of these are break even, some of these are pa are are uh profitable. And so uh I wanted to do this because Branch of Emma was was really nice to teach about software engineering. I want it to understand

uh science And engineering of science. And so it was really a great educational experience for me of getting deep in the trenches with a bunch of PhD uh entrepreneurs. across the range of all these different scientific disciplines. How much do you think uh

I want to talk about the health stuff in a second, but how much do you think Venmo alone is worth right now? You guys bought that for twenty eight million, I think. Like only five Only like five or six or seven years into Braintree, like pretty early into Braintree's existence. Did you pay mostly cash for that? I mean, how did you sh sh finance that deal? And what do you think that that's worth now?'Cause you keep saying Brain Tree Venmo as if like Venmo is as powerful or as valuable as Braintree. I don't know the current values. I mean I I sold the company uh several years ago.

Uh I know it's Very viable, and so is Braintree. And so this was a decision I made when When I did sell. Right event memo for eight hundred million.

It was a decision of okay, so I'm now thirty four years old. I want to move on to this next stage of life. Uh. accumulation of money was not my objective. And I could have stuck with the company and we could have made more

Yeah, been more valuable. But it was like okay, so if I do this it's three hundred million That's a good enough starting base to go off into these other things. And because they were going to be in the areas of Yeah, deep tech.

I knew they would take a decade or so to start. It was just gonna be a long startup process. And so and looking at the you know prime of my years, I thought I'll take this. I'll have a go at this. And try to do something meaningful there.

But it was just a calculation of time and and re and reconfiguring my life towards that. And so you've now Let's say that's ten years ago, ten, eleven years ago. Um

We're Basically. Eleven years and a hundred million dollars in And you probably at the beginning had a bunch of things that were bets that you thought were interesting, might pan out, predictions maybe of what what the world might look like in twenty twenty two. Um

Can you as best as you can give us the summary of like, you know What were you right about? What were you wrong about? And where do you think the uh the big Sort of like um promises now. Uh the venture fund has been remarkably successful. especially a as a newbie into this in this to this world.

Uh the number of good investments relative to bad investments is extremely high. So I'd say we've done remarkably well on the deep tech side with synthetic biology, genomics, nanotech. On kernel, I think we nailed the technology selection. Uh initially there was

The the idea was could we make Brain measurement. Up society. Yeah, we can pretty we can measure Almost everything about ourselves.

In a fairly routine way. Except for our brains. We don't have good technology. Explain what kernel is. People listeners probably don't know what kernel is. So I mean I've just seen it as like a helmet that you put on and like you think something and you could change like something on a computer because of your brain waves. So if you think about uh like

So wearables are a familiar concept. We put this thing on our fingers or our wrists. And it gives us data. Like uh Sleep stats. Respiration rate.

Heart rate. Cardiovascular Expenditure and exercise. Like we get these This set of data.

And it's pretty easy to acquire. And then we can use this information to help us. I understand our health and wellness. We currently can't do that for our brain. So if I have a question

Um Am I in the early stages of cognitive decline? Uh, do I have anxiety? If so, what kind of anxiety? Do I have depression, but what kind of depression? Uh

Is Is my lifestyle conducive to states of focus or not? What is my emotional reaction to things? Just really basic questions. And The

Most people think that their self awareness is basically the sensor system that captures their brain. Like because I'm conscious and because I ha can feel when I have a headache. It basically is a robust enough sensor system. To do it, and that's not correct.

Uh So much happens in our brain. that we are unaware of and there's so much data in our brain that is informative to what we want to do. And so this what we at Colonel what we've done is we've built a neuromaging helmet, like you said, Sam. You just put it on your head. It takes one minute to set up.

It uses light. to measure the brain activity. And these activity patterns. are extremely informative. So for example I did

Uh I was a pilot participant for academy study. ketamine is has been used for the treatment of depression. We use it as an off label study with healthy people. But the question is. What does ketamine do To your brain.

And you know, you of course someone can do ketamine and they can be like, Hey Sam, how was Ketemy like? I don't know, they get a different dimension and I think I feel better, but I'm not sure. But it's kinda like, you know, how was your sleep for the past week? Uh it's an extremely imprecise answer and you're going on a subjective self assessment and your memory stay and you don't really know and it's like it's a disaster. So this

This measurement system is basically meant to standardize The measurement. of the brain. And so it the ch part big part of the challenge was building the device of just of identifying is there a technology in existence

that can be built that makes brain measurement mainstream. So everyone does it for everything. And then second is can we find applications for early markets? And so we've built the tech. We have a few papers coming out. And now we're in the product market fit. uh finding the first application for the technology.

When you so for the listeners, uh if you just Google Brian Johnson Blueprint, you'll see it I don't what's the URL? Is it just for the blueprint? What is it? Blueprint dot Brian Johnson dot co. What uh sorry time, one one final comment on this, just uh Or to make this maybe an attempt to make it intuitive.

When people begin experiencing cognitive decline. Uh this may be true what happens with al with intoxication with alcohol too. We we just didn't alcohol Studying. When your brain is impaired. Like we just sell it with alcohol.

Uh with moder alcohol. Your brain uh compensates. For the deficiency. And so you you can't pick up the impairment. But you can you can record it and identify it.

But at a certain level of of intoxication, your brain can no longer make up for that impairment. And so then it reveals itself in impairment in behavior. And so that's true with somebody who may be experiencing cough decline. You may be Along the path of cognitive decline.

And you may say, I feel great, I seem great, I'm moving great, everything's great. But you just can't pick it up. And so it's the value of like oh wouldn't it be amazing. If I had the ability to measure my brain on a routine basis. that informs me of these things that I myself cannot identify.

Everyone did it and it was just incorporated into standard of care. across all things and how we dealt with our mental health and wellness. Yeah. All the above.

Is it is there anything people can do if they're in cognitive decline? Or is it just sort of like, well I've measured this. Sad news. All right. You know, well, I don't don't have a uh sober up. Have you guys ever seen on Twenty Three and Me or something like that, they you they used to have like an Als so I guess uh Alzheimer's is genetic and like there's like a particular type of gene that you could have that increases the likelihood that you're gonna have it. And twenty three and me used to do this thing. Where they said, uh all right, you have it, but before we can even tell you if you have it, you have to sign this paperwork saying you're not gonna assume this is a diagnosis and you can't flip out.

Well, I had it. And then like I did flip out. And then they eventually removed that. I believe I don't think they have it anymore,'cause they said people were just f flipping out too much. And one of the reasons they removed it is they tell you that they you have this and they're like Good luck. Like maybe put like frames like they're like There's all these like I don't know if they said this, but like people were like if you like

have frames of pictures upside down. And so you have to like work harder to like figure out who's in the picture. That's gonna like help you like get a stronger brain, but In general, when I was researching it's like oh shit, I have this gene, what I have to do. People were like Uh good luck. You know, just like I guess hopefully you'll be all right. But there there wasn't like that many things. So yeah, what w can you actually fix any of these things? Uh we think about it uh

So Uh, we are accustomed to the idea of society having engineering standards. So we know that when we buy an appliance It's going to fit through our front door. We don't have to go measure our front door.

look at the dimensions on the website and be like is this gonna fit or not? Because we know But the door size is standard, the appliance size is standard, it can be moved into my house. That's true for everything we you know, so many things we do in life. We just know these standards. What do we Agree, we build society and so we have

millions of invisible standards. We have very few standards about our brains. Because we can't measure it. We know the the timing that's appropriate for green light, red uh yellow light and red light on lights'cause we know

the reaction time of humans to lights, we know breaking power, we know People stop times. So we do have data. We can actually determine that. We do not have engineering standards around the brain.

Depression, anxiety, confidence decline, because we have no measurement. And so the fundamentally the way to How could we actually create a step change function change in the world and how we deal with our minds. You begin with measurement.

And once you have numbers, science begins with numbers and counting. And then ecosystems form around that. So genetics, I think is is Kind of like that. It's not as numerical uh as what the the brain measurement could be. But that was a fundamental thing is if you

Give everyone the numbers. You get an opportunity to build Um Solutions. Around those problems.

This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Hunspot grow better.

So This blueprint, your your your blog, I don't know what you're calling it, your experiment It's pretty wild because You know, I saw what you used to look like. You weren't bad looking, but you were definitely were thicker than you are now. Like your jawline is like crazy cut right now, and like you just look way different than you used to do. I mean, it's pretty fascinating and you know, brain brain tree is amazing. You've built something amazing. This blueprint thing is like Way crazier and and unique and odd and it's awesome. And like I've read it

And you're basically, if I remember correctly, like I've been following it uh for uh a bunch of months and you you do regular updates and at first um you were I think you got down to like six percent body fat and you're like Okay, I think six percent is a little bit too low. Let's go to seven and a half percent. Uh and then you're also like eating this like a nutty pudding, I think you called it. Uh so you have a vegan diet and you're like just eating like nuts and like tons of vitamins and like What appears to be Not tasty, boring food. Like you've gone all in and

The the premise behind this is I think you had this blog post that said like late night Brian no longer gets to make decisions or something like that. Like, you know, you're you're you're at home at night and you're hungry and you just would go and snack and eat bad food and you're like I'm no l I'm no longer letting that guy uh make any decisions. He he no longer has a say. We're letting experimental Brian uh make the decisions from now on. Um This thing's crazy, man. What Why are you doing this and what Have you found to be actually meaningful versus not meaningful?

And by the way, you're doing you're doing the knees over toes guy uh thing, I noticed. You're like walking backwards, you're doing the tibialis raises. This guy was onto something. You're doing it, it looked like I am Yeah, I mean so so blue print uh for me, uh this goes back to the age of twenty one. And to me this is the Best answer I've ever come up with in my life.

If you bait if you How can we imagine The human race and intelligence generally surviving itself and thriving.

Like what is our plan? As a species. To thrive. Bluprint to me is the best idea I've ever come up come up with and the most practical idea I've ever come up with to address that. And so from the outside perspective, it appears to be health and wellness and anti aging and whatnot.

That's all true. But really it's a philosophical endeavor. For the future of intelligence. And so the The way this

I would abridge this is This began in uh from a pro uh basically I had a problem of overeating every day. Every night at seven PM I would eat. I'd rather have a second serving for dinner or third serving

Or have dessert or do something. that I would consider to be self harm. Like eating too much food. the wrong food and it was just causing bad things to me. I couldn't sleep well. It was I was overweight, like all the above.

And so I tried everything to fix it and I couldn't. And so I playfully said, I'm going to fire Even me, Brian,'cause The Brian who wakes up in the morning, he exercises, he does really well eating. Same with lunch, Brian. But this five PM to ten PM, Brian, like boy is he a rascal.

He's always making the wrong choice. Like I could absolutely rely upon him to make the wrong choice. And he always had an infinite number of reasons on why today was okay. To do the thing. And so I was like, you know what? I've had it. Like he's done. He's absolutely out. And so I playfully wrote this blog post of like

all Brian's got together, we had discussion, we're like, Brian, even Brian, you're making this thing awful. And so I just I Revoke his authority from five PM to ten PM to eight. And so what you start off is like this playful Thing

now turn into what I'm trying what I basically have done to my My entire system. Yeah. I now Only eat.

What? My Body asks for According to data and science. Have you not done that at all? Have you had any splurges since you've started this? And do you en ever intend to do that? Uh I have

Had infractions, yes. Although this is I think this is I think this is the most interesting part of the entire thing. So um Just to be clear the starting point.

This is a big deviation from how society is structured right now. Uh right now. Our minds. have unquestioned authority. in deciding what we eat. So if you think about your daily life.

You go to the store and you walk down aisles, you're like, ah, maybe this, maybe that. You decide how much you put on your plate. You decide if you go to a restaurant, you're presented with a menu. You decide if you're going to have a pizza party. You decide if you're going to eat Doritos.

Like you're making these decisions all the time. And it's a combination of how you feel, what you want, like you know, if you're trying to be good or whatever, but You're basically giving your mind unquestioned authority to do it. Blueprint.

So what's that? And it says my mind. Has zero authority. My body has a hundred percent authority.

So it the measurement of my heart and liver and lungs and DNA methylation patterns. It directly asks for what it wants. The data. And I can never override it. And so in this idea

So the the thought experiment is. If you could achieve Perfect health. And maintain perfect health. But it but it required you

To accept. uh basically what an algorithm was doing to deliver What you eat and when you eat. Would you do it? And then in that our experiment, Sam.

And I've had this conversation hundreds of times now. The reaction people have is almost this fear response. And their conscious mind. Panics. And it it's like I I see it like a computer screen scrolling of like infinite number of questions. But like what if

Cheetos, pizza, party, seven diplomat, like whatever. And then it like the mind is panicking. or the contemplation of loss of control. that it can't do the things that it thinks.

Then mine says the only way I can be happy in existence. is if I still get to choose what I do when I do it. And the mind cannot get over it. It cannot just say Hold tight. Like is it probably Let me just contemplate. Is it possible?

That I am a self harm machine. I cannot stop myself from committing self harm. I probably will never be able to do it. And if I keep on doing this, it's probably gonna lead to a predictable outcome. And so it's such an interesting interaction of

rolling through this thing of And I think it's really on par if we say like one of the major things that have impacted humanity of Is the earth the center of the universe? Or you know, it did uh is there an evolutionary

uh force creating all things on earth. I think this one could be on that scale of A societal uh understanding. That are unquestioned

Uh Granting of authority to our conscious minds. Is it the root? Of all of our problems in society. And so the contemplation here is if if I imagine this

Um Could I Stop self-harm from happening inside of Brian. Because just like there's wars going on and there's all these tribal factions of the world.

The same thing is going on inside of me. With uh My own body and my cravings and whatever else. I've achieved goal alignment within myself on this program. And so that's that's really what this whole thing is about, is it's it's trying to think through

How could I achieve goal alignment? And we hear a lot about AI goal alignment with humans and that being a potential threat. that I think the more interesting starting point is not for me to look on the other side of my eyeballs and say, let me find everyone else who's got a problem in the world. Let me look at myself and say What is my own internal chaos and war? And can I even try to resolve conflict within myself.

There's a There's a part of me that's like, wow, this is Um this is incredible. I'm going to the blueprint site, I'm looking at the the routine of looking at the photo I mean, you're completely shredded. This is amazing. Um So there's part of me that's like wow, this is incredible and then there's a part of me that's like You're doing the thing a little bit where it's like, Is this Mayo? No, he's calling it Aeoli where it's like, Oh wow, this is not only just great for your health, this is transcendence for the race and the society and of like Okay, maybe I could see how that's true, but it I mean it does seem like you're not actually

It's not that your body's deciding. Your brain has just decided I'm gonna use data about what my body wants instead of impulse, you know, whatever my impulse driven, you know, brain was trying to do before. Um But like i I guess regardless, when I look at this, I'm like this is amazing, but man Uh you know, this looks like

A full time PH uh full time effort. Plus PhD level intelligence Uh plus a bunch of money to be able to do this. I think he said his cost, by the way. His cost, I think say like three grand a month. Like it's not like crazy. Well, I I think it's three grand a month, but there's also like the mental energy that you would have to put towards doing this is like, you know, the the real cost. So But but you did it.

In service of of f other people too. So like, you know, what is the eighty twenty? What have you discovered or been the the highest leverage Yeah, you know, changes. I know it's in this, but say it out loud because not everyone's gonna go read the whole thing. So like what are the the highest leverage changes that you were able to make um during this experiment? The first Sean on this. Um Maybe just a reflection. Why is it in society

Do we Except. This ferocious system To invite everyone to commit self harm. Like when you walk into the grocery store

I mean it is violence. All outright violence. through the representation of advertising and ingredients and sugar. And you're in there and you're supposed to be on on equal footing with that? Like no way, we're all matched. And the same thing when we're sized up against algorithms.

It's a totally unfair match in society. We just gleefully allow the self harm. And so the individual is pitted against algorithms And capitalism like Good luck, individual.

on trying to keep your shit together. And so it's just it's an unfair thing and I think it's a uh It's Bad. For everyone.

To be in this game. But then in terms of like uh the basics for people Um it's really understanding that Um Trying to win this game with willpower.

is a losing game. If you put yourself in a situation Where you have option A and option B. You're probably going to lose fifty percent of the time or more.

And that's the whole thing I've been trying to blueprint is Yes, it's expensive right now. Yes, like it's difficult. This always happens with innovation. It's always expensive and ex and accessible and in time it gets better. And that's why I openly blog about all the things I'm doing is I'm trying to

Get this out so others can approve upon it. The um I think the most Important thing. that someone could do to win here.

would be to accept the basic principle that it's a system that drives what you eat. It's not your decision making. But but what about the the the like the specific truth are there any like truths or any like hypotheses that you believe to be true, like for Uh, you know, you're like, Well I even though you said you did a great analogy with the door frame, how it's standard and how bodies aren't necessarily like that, but like has going vegan like made a huge difference to you? Is there anything about like

For example, a lot of us sit at chairs You know, eighty hours a week uh staring at screens and we work really hard. Is there any like where you're like, Oh, you know, actually thirty hours He's in a piston squat right now doing this whole interview. Yeah. Are you like, well, you know, like thirty hours is I I think in the what's the the Israeli guy, he wrote the book Homo sapiens. In one of his books he was like, you know, like hunter and gatherers work only thirty hours a week and that kinda seems like an ideal number. Is there anything like just sapiens, no homo, okay? My bad. My bad. I'm inclusive. Uh so yeah, is there any like is there any truths that that you've discovered for you that you know, it maybe is not right for everyone else. I

Started I got my pilot's license several years ago. And In doing so I was assessing the risk. Of death. And one of the stats that uh stood out to me was that over seventy percent

Of incidents. And aviation. were attributable to amateur pilots. And so while I went through the certification of every plane I flew, I was type rated in every plane and you know, whatnot. Um

I refuse to fly alone. Because I knew The risk of error. was just Uh

The math was there. The stats were there. The same is true with health and wellness. I tried to do this on my own. You know, almost like going around this little bag. listening to podcasts, reading books, reading literature. And trying to put little gems of insight into my bag.

And try to piece together my own protocol. It's the same As Trying to fly an airplane. by myself. You know, I study it. I get typed in it.

My error rate's just gonna be very high. And so And then three is that um be somebody feeling motivated in this moment of doing something good because tomorrow

They're going to fail. And it's also the value here is not debating is a vegan diet better than a carnivore diet? To me, the the real essence of this conversation, the only way this conversation can be of value besides of all the chatter going on the world of every everyone else talking about this is one. Is there A engineered solution.

I that actually solves this from a citizen perspective. And two. Uh can you do so with data? It doesn't do anyone any good to debate is carnivore better than vegan. It's a meaningless conversation. Data.

is the only thing that matters. And so that's why I publish all my data. is like uh I'm vegan for ethical and moral reasons. But I'm not vegan uh because I think it's it's um you know, I didn't at the at layer of abstraction, we just put the data. We're agnostic to these inputs.

And so that's really what I'm trying to say. This is not a health and wellness gig, this is not a diet trend. is really trying to get the structural formation of what it means to be human our relationship with food. our relationship with happiness and and you know like how we structure our lives. And it's also trying to say let's get past these silly

Tribal debates. at these layers of abstraction which are meaningless and they just confuse everyone.'Cause then people immediately say First they say eggs are bad for you, then they say they're good for you. No one knows and they just stop. At that point.

When in reality there are more right answers than wrong in terms of doing this in a methodical way. You know, before we started uh recording Sean was just like gushing about how like jacked and ripped you are and how he thought you looked great. Is it mostly uh Are you getting any more

uh attention from women. Or is it all just guys like Sean who are just like eyeballed you? 'Cause whenever I whenever I get in shape, I'm like, Oh yeah, my wife's gonna love this. And she's like Yeah.

Yeah I guess you look all right. Uh it's always dudes. It's only men. I I think Sam, I would say the The person most happiest. Me.

You know like I I had terribly complicated emotions. looking at myself. in my worst years.

It just was so I felt so much shame and guilt and lack of respect. because I just felt out of control. And powerless. And now when I look at myself. I have such positive emotions.

That I'm stable. That uh things are reliable. That I trust myself. Yeah, I I trust the systems that are built. uh it has transformed my relationship with myself. It transforms what I think about

uh what I can become as a person. uh the relationships I have. So it's just It's hard to articulate how significant of a psychological shift has been for me. in my own understanding. My own identity.

Well, you just gave a really great answer to a really dub question. Uh that was amazing. Uh I'm glad you did that. Because We set you up with sort of a Goofy question and and I think you said something really profound there. Um

I wanted to ask you, y you said you said something like uh as a bit of a cliffhanger. You were like, you know Uh willpower is not the answer. You said you're the The good thing that could come of this is not, oh, you listen to this podcast or and you're motivated to go you know, go eat two pounds of veggies tomorrow'cause you know, you'll revert and you're up against This, you know, the grocery stores, this sugar casino basically, and then, you know, your all your all your social media is just this like algorithm designed to h to hook you and you know, you are sort of

David vs Goliath here. Uh or I guess bad analogy, day one. But like you know You are powerless compared to the the onslaught that's coming at you trying trying to get you to make a certain decision. And um You know, do you but you didn't quite say you're like, you know, there's a system, but if okay, if I take that, I'm like tomorrow I wake up Brian's gone, I'm like all right, today's about a system

And I'm gonna be like, Wait, what the fuck was he talking about? What's the system? Uh what am I supposed to do? And that's where I would stop. So I wanna make sure we don't leave it at that. What would you say is is the approach That you advocate for'cause you say it's the data. Is it Oh, I should s begin tracking certain markers, and that's the step to take, and then let my own intuition ride. Is it Is it I gotta fire evening evening Sean? Because I had the same problem. I have the same problem now that you you described you had then. What do you what would you say is the actionable Way forward that that sort of

Is the sustainable successful path. Yep, I'd I'd say three things. Uh one. Um Fire.

The worst version of yourself. So whatever you do. Whatever it is. Like whatever time. However the circumstances are

Identify that person. And fire him. So be successful with that one act. Uh step number two. is make a firm commitment.

on a one step towards a system. So for example, for me, that's calories. I eat one thousand nine hundred and seventy seven calories per day. That's it. Not anymore. And that is my absolute budget and I cannot cover it.

And so set a firm boundary. Uh that That's what you're going to do or you're going to stick with it. And then three is you can start refining the details of what those calories are and when you eat it and you know you want to pack more nutrition in.

Over time. But just Acknowledge. That you yourself are powerless. to win in a in a moment by moment willpower game.

and structurally set up the path to win. Fire the worst version of yourself. To get that uh Muscle. The build? set very clear boundaries and then you can

You can refine. Don't worry about taking on the whole thing all at once. But just this baby step. And then you'll build this muscle like my seventeen year old Is Yeah.

He does the identical things I do. And you know, Sam, you came back and you're like, How many times have you made infractions and like you know, so He went through this whole thing of how many times Did he have to make the error? of eating too much or making an exception or breaking the protocol or whatever.

And it was something like, I don't know, I I forget what we talked about. It was like something in the thirties range, you know, where I In the morning he'd like dad I failed. Fine. Fine, right? Like

But he finally got to the same point where I did where You can get to that moment. And you're tempted to do something and you can model out exactly what how it's going to feel to do that thing. And you can model out exactly what it's gonna feel like after you've done that thing. You can model out your sleep and you can model out your next morning how you feel about yourself.

And pretty soon. the simulation becomes so clear in your mind. You're like, Yeah, no, like There's nothing in that series of events. Where I win.

Like literally nowhere. Why am I going to do it? And then it just becomes a point where It's you know, people ask me like do you have cheat days and like no, like I a cheat day sounds awful to me. It sounds like the worst feeling in the world.

to be full and to be regretful, like no, that's the last thing in the world I wanna do. these baby steps and you build up your your your muscles and then it like soon just becomes a way of being You uh You're you're clearly uh incredibly unique. You have you're very insightful, you're very wise. You're a person who like you talk to me and I'm like, Oh man, this guy has a lot of things figured out.

But you're also um you're like very precise and you're like I follow the data. Were you a good manager, you think? Did people were did people like working with you and for you, or did they find you to be just like too challenging because you're so uh You you you're you're just so hyper unique. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I I joke my team at Braintree. But I didn't care what they thought. I only cared to learn what their significant others thought. Because It's very hard to get someone's real opinion of you.

Because it's it's difficult for someone to be honest. But when we all know when we go home from work. And we're talking to our significant others, like that's the truth serum in action. You know, like where we really say something. And so

Uh I do have some data where people said I'm the best boss they've ever had in their life. I'm sure other people dislike the way I s I do certain things. But I certainly

Um I care deeply. About being A high value person.

And These people's lives. And so not only, you know, a a good steward of business, but Okay. Um

Creating an environment where they become their best selves. Was that a learned behavior? But was that like a learned behavior? Like were you like, Well, if I treat people right, I'm gonna get my outcome and Or was it just like you was this like is this how you were raised? Uh like what what motivated that? Yeah, it just feels like the right way to do things. I mean like if if you think about it more structurally in society

We accept this exchange. Of spending our life points. For a system of rewards. That includes status and wealth and something else. And I suppose why I bring this up is I think

Um We all know how much money's in our bank account. We know how much we weigh. We know how many followers, social uh media followers we have. But we don't know for example our speed of aging. Like how fast are you aging in this moment?

And if you had aging points. Like your bank account, would you spend them a certain way? And so what I'm saying is we have uh fundamentally accepted that we are on this decline in life, we're going to spend our life points, we're going through the grave. And the things that may live on may include our reputation or like our contributions or whatever.

And I'd suggest now. that may be the opportunity for us to flip it. So if you say In the year twenty twenty two, if you're looking at the horizon of possibilities for humanity. Like what is a thing you can barely see Which is

Barely imaginable. You would say um Basically um Don't spend your life points recklessly. If you can live long enough, this there may be a new wave here. So like Blueprint, I'm trying to do two things. I'm trying to

Maximally slow my rate of aging. Because entropy is very strong, you're not gonna beat it. So I'm rate I'm currently aging at point seven six. So I For every three hundred sixty five days a year. I age two hundred and seventy seven.

So I basically get like October, November, December for free. And then For the for the for the months I do age. then the progress is to reverse that aging that has happened. So that

I can be the same biological age. And so if we have aging points, we have an Asian bank account. Then society could shift. Instead of us saying we're gonna be a martyr. Or wealth.

or status or whatever. Um Would it change and that balance and would it more be about humans? So we become obsessed. about what we can become as a species. Not what our technology can become.

Right. And let me ask you, you uh like a lot of people who listen to this are entrepreneurs. And I think one of the cool things when we have somebody like you come on versus like You know Our buddy who's doing like a vending machine arbitrage and like, you know, is he tells a different story, which is like, Oh, this is great. I got this income stream coming in and I was able to quit my job and do this thing. Right. That's one s sort of inspiring story. This is a different one, which is like, you know, spend your creative and entrepreneurial

Energies. on things that really matter, both to you and your lifespan as well as like, you know, just the human civilization. Um What do you wish people were working on? What opportunities do you see? Where you're like, Man, we need more talent and brains going and trying to solve X, or this breakthrough just happened and really nobody's

Doing why or if I had more time, I'd be doing a you know, this other thing. I'll give you an example. We had Palmer Lucky on and we're like, Cool, you did Oculus, now you're doing angeril and he was like Yeah, but before that, I was playing with this idea of like reforming the prison system this way, or creating this like oil based food that's like zero calorie food that would just run straight through you. Like he had these like crazy ideas. He's like, I think somebody could go do these things. Do you have any ideas like that that are like, you know, I think somebody could go do X? I do, uh a lot of them, but I would say I'm really obsessed with one. Uh that's

Huh. Goal alignment. Or cooperation. At the at the basis Um

Everything that exists on planet Earth. There's a singular at play. Can it cooperate. And so this blueprint thing, this question is Can I bring world peace to Brian?

In my body. The answer is yes, I did. Now my mind is is a whole nother thing, right? The negative self talk. Like all the stuff that goes on in my brain. That's an entirely different project. But bluprint is applicable to climate change. It's the same thing.

If we were to measure the world with millions of data points and let the earth Speak. And then we work within those constraints. That's the solution.

for how we can coexist with a healthy planet. Versus right now. Our minds overrun the planet. We do what we want, when we want, and how we want. And it comes at the expense of our planet. So just like we're committing self harm to ourselves. We're committing harm to the earth.

Collectively the same problem. And so if you can think about goal alignment within ourselves. Between each other. with planet earth and with AI. It's a gigantic

computational goal alignment problem. And so the idea like this AI alignment problem we have we've talked about now. Like between AI and humans, like what? Like We don't have goal alignment within ourselves, let alone between humans and then humans and AI.

It's a it's kind of a crazy notion. then you know, like if you look at the number of disconnects on that entire stream. And The starting point in most people's Assumptions is

Let me start with what I can see and how I can change other people's behavior. Person looking in. And so I'd say Yes, I have ideas, but none of them matter. Because unless we can solve cooperation

What is it that we have to look forward to? As a species. So what's an example of that? So like you uh You talked about basically like the goal alignment first with your body, right? And you were able to solve that and blueprint is a good example. What's another example of how you would take this idea of cooperation or goal alignment and what would be like a more specific like point of attack or or or like product or service or whatever that would be created.

Along those lines. I mean The brain. Like so I would love to tackle my brain next. And that's what kernel is. If I have this device and I can measure my brain. If you think about it in in like what we eat today is a dietary input to our bodies. And you think about what is my diet for my brain.

Like the news sources, the social media sources. My friend, my environment. We have no idea. What's happening. We don't we haven't we don't have a measure. And so is it possible that we basically eat

ninety percent junk food in a given day. To our brains. Because that's just the way society is structured. And so I'd love to address that of getting the baseline of where I have my brain. And then uh more broadly, I've been talking to several people uh who

Uh specialist in math and computational methodologies. Try to figure out. It are there mathematical approaches? In the same way that John Nash came up with um you know uh game theory.

Are there mathematical approaches to think about How we might solve this. uh between humans between humans and AI, between humans AI and the planet. And so like you know the I can do this with my body, it's a it's a pretty straightforward thing to do. Now

But it's just gonna get more complicated. Uh, then more agents you have in the game. So I've like worked with Tim Ferris uh in the past and like I remember I would ask like we would just An example is uh he we'd be walking our dogs together and I'd be like, Oh Tim, that's a cool dog leash and he'd be like, Oh, this dog leash, you know, the reason it's interesting is made of horse's hair, which is good for the dog for this reason and that reason. I found it in Japan. And uh then we had like Bolgy on the uh podcast, you know, and he was like he would go through these like we would just ask him like what he had for breakfast? And he would just give us this like complex answer and it was actually

Pretty profound. Palmer Lucky was kinda like that too. And you are one hundred percent in that same ballpark where I make a stupid joke and I ask a dumb question or we ask something that seems straightforward and simple and you give like a pretty profound Answer. And what's interesting is you actually do this thing that Elad does where you ask him a question and most people don't do this.

They pause. They don't they'll they'll actually not talk for like ten seconds and they just think. And I actually in it I try not to interrupt because most people are uncomfortable with that. One time I I interrupted you where I or you got silent. The g the by the way, the key to get interviews, you don't interrupt that. So I kinda screwed that up. But you uh you like are really thoughtful and like In one way it's exhausting'cause like everything you say is like profound and I'm like thinking about it. And I'm like, Well, I want to ask you all these questions about that too, now and this and this. On the other hand, it's uh It's refreshing. I mean, it's just enlightening. You're just

You're you're just an interesting human and you you your your intensity is I can see it being off putting for some people, but for me, like I'm I'm I'm I'm into it. Uh you're you're just a very unique person. I I think it's like really interesting to hear Uh your perspective. I don't think you've said anything that I agree or or uh that I disagree with, but maybe you have and it's like Well that's okay, but you're just like an original thinker. I dig it. Thank you, Sam. Appreciate that.

What's uh give us before we go, what's one of these contraptions behind you? Uh give us what is one of these interesting things. That's just a curry machine, isn't it? Yeah, one of them looks like a soda stream or something. That'd be funny. Like got me. Like you know, Coke and Pepsi and Yeah. Is that a Red Bull behind you? Yeah. Uh yeah, so we I last week, a couple weeks ago, I we bought a uh medical grade, hospital grade ultrasound machine. And so it part of this has just been buying And

the kind of equipment that allows us to do the stuff we're trying to do. And so for example, ultrasound. So if you look at the the pyramid of measurement. Wearables are like part of the first Category. And then you get to biofluids like blood draws and and you know, urine and whatever else.

uh imaging is an entirely different c quality class. And so if you want to get really good data on on yourself, it's uh ultrasound and MRI and and uh Yeah, we're doing the kernel. And so Um

We really had to build up this infrastructure. So one of the reasons why this is so expensive is we've basically built out like a a mini clinic hospital. Here with all the stuff we have. It's actually where a lot of you can't in your house. Mm-hmm. And are there like four dudes just kind of like

That are your physicians that are monitoring you at all times, or what's gonna ha what's your team, what's your stack for for people with. The body stuff. Uh for the ultrasound we have five. Sonographers. So one scenographer specializes in

uh the heart one does Lungs, pancreas, liver. Uh kidney, another one does, uh muscle skeletal, another one does, uh Doppel Doppler for the brain. And so for example I we just did um

One of the ways to quantify working out. Is We're using ultrasound to measure tendons, ligaments, like all the component parts of my joints, ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders. And then we implement this these exercise regimes and then we look at the changes. So like are they working to so uh what degree? Everything we do is quantified. And so it's not like oh this thing makes me feel better.

Feelings rarely matter with anything we do. And so yeah, this the hardware and the specific team. And so just like we have five sonographers to run the ultrasound machine. We have specialists in lungs, specialists in the heart, specialists in other areas. So the team is like twenty five or so, maybe now. Oh.

all together that have different specialties. Man, this is crazy. Sean's answer to that question is like I just got like a poster of dogs playing poker, one shoe, three AirPods, and a couple LD Cokeans. Like we ask you. It's just like oh you mean that ultrasound? I'm j I see I don't need all this measurement. Like if you just export my DoorDash history, it'll tell you how I'm aging. Like a greyhound, right? Yeah, does Chick fil A make you older or younger? What are your thoughts on ranch? Brian, this has been awesome. Thanks for thanks for coming on. We've been we talked about you way back as like this awesome guy and it's amazing to to get to meet you and hear some of the stories and ask ask our questions firsthand. So

Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, exactly.

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