How I Built a 7-Figure Mushroom Empire From My Kitchen | Julian Mitchell DSH #1049

Life's 100%.

There's that longevity element to it.

Yeah, average lifespan for a male in the U.S.

is 73 now.

Yeah.

It dropped.

And that's lifespan.

Yeah, that's life span.

That's health span.

Exactly.

You know, like, when can he play golf?

Or can he go play tennis with his buddies?

Or can he, you know, do the things he loves doing?

Probably not.

That probably stopped at 55.

Which is crazy.

So the average health span is, yeah, probably 50s, 60s, which is scary.

Yeah.

That's halfway for us.

Yeah.

You know.

All right, guys.

Julian Mitchell here today.

We're going to talk mushrooms.

I'm excited.

Thanks for doing all.

I'm excited.

Can talk mushrooms for days.

I'll condense it down to an hour.

Absolutely.

How'd you get into mushrooms?

How did I get into it?

It was just really understanding, you know, everyone was moving towards natural health products.

I was a physio previously in the Premier League, so elite sport was my background.

And from there, it was really like sick of being pitched products that I guess weren't as effective or work as well for our athletes.

And at that time, looking at the research, mushrooms, plenty of research out there.

Nine years ago, this was.

So it was very early.

And we just started growing mushrooms literally in our home,

just playing around.

And then from there, hire some biotechnologists and start a mushroom company.

Wow.

So you were growing them at first.

Yeah, we still grow them today.

Oh, nice.

We have our own facility farm in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Very passionate about, you know, within the supplement space.

transparency, trust, quality.

Yeah.

You know, it's a bit of a cowboy zone out there.

And so if we can grow everything ourselves, extract everything ourselves, we can provide a quality product.

That's beautiful because a lot of people outsource that step of their their business, right?

Yeah.

And then the QC is way harder.

It's like a lot of companies out there are more, I guess, focused on that marketing.

And of course, it's hard to do both, you know, be an operational company.

So at our core, we're a biotechnology company.

We grow, extract, and full-time scientists, QA teams.

Right.

All of that.

That's its own big thing in a way.

But of course, then there's marketing that you need to do as well.

But the marketing comes easier if you've got a reasonable product.

And what's your elevator pitch on the mushrooms?

What are the health benefits?

The health benefits, I mean, it depends depends on what sort of, it's very individual.

So for example, you know, we were with the 49ers last week chatting to the director of performance there.

Funnily enough, he likes shiitake for his beard.

Oh, for beard.

For beard growth, for nail growth, for hair growth.

Really?

But at the same time, he loves Lionsmane.

Lionsman's the obvious one because it's so instantaneous for memory recall, articulation, sharpness, focus.

There's something called BDNF levels in our brain.

And this is very important for memory and learning.

And as we get older, these BDNF levels naturally drop in everyone.

And And so if you're looking at an older person, you're thinking their BDNF levels will be low.

Now,

the higher your BDNF levels, the better your memory, the better you're learning.

The lion's mane mushroom helps to support BDNF levels in the brain.

So that's the exciting one that I think is very sexy for people because everyone wants a better brain.

But again, the shiitake for hair, skin, and nails, the turkey tail for gut health, you know, digestion, gut health, bloating, celiac Crohn's, these things that are irritable to our gut, which, you know, with pesticides today in our foods and our other sort of, you know, environmental toxins, a lot of people's guts aren't as they would like to be.

So that's one for those guys as well.

Chain to

Duncan at the UFC.

Yesterday here at the Performance Institute, for him, he's the director of performance at the UFC and he's saying, turquetail for him.

So it's sort of very individual, I guess, but gut health.

Turquetail ratio for sleep is amazing.

So if you're tracking your sleep for deep sleep, for getting in that dreaming state, really, really good.

Melatonin is popular in America.

You see it plastered across the shelves, but it gives you this hangover.

The next day, you're a bit foggy sometimes, and it's not something you want to take, you know, too, too consistently.

So, the Reishi is a great swap out for that.

Not only that, for melatonin, I get nightmares off melatonin.

And a lot of people I know that take it get nightmares.

Yeah.

So, I don't know if there's a link.

Yeah, that's interesting.

We'll try the ratio out.

Yeah, I'll definitely try the ratio out.

Is it in this?

It's in the set.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's sort of what

people like because, as I said, I can talk about mushrooms for a long time and each one has its own benefit.

So I want to do them all a service.

But the Reishi for sleep is popular, but the set has all of those mushrooms.

I love it.

I love that you grow it yourself too.

Cause, yeah, there's a lot of glyphosate in the U.S.

just in the rainwater, right?

Yeah.

So that's a problem.

Glyphosate, heavy metals, you know, mycotoxins as well, you want to watch out for.

So we do all our third-party lab testing.

It's all on our website.

Love it.

We've got the Informed Sport badge, which is important because that sort of allows all college students, all

NBA, NFL, UFC athletes to use our product without any questions.

Because sometimes there has been stories where in contract manufacturing, they swap a batch out and there's still something, some residue, and then the athlete gets banned.

That happened to Ryan Garcia, right?

Crazy.

Yeah, off one supplement.

And he had no idea.

And I think John Jones previously back in the day as well.

So it can happen.

Crazy.

I see the shilajit here.

So I started taking that for my low testosterone.

It helped a lot.

Yeah.

I think it's one of the most obvious things that help testosterone.

Yeah.

You know, and a male can sort of tell testosterone levels and sleep quality based on morning wood, you know, as a simple, and chili jet definitely helps that.

You know, it's just a subjective quick measure without going and getting blood work.

So, yeah, chilajit for me is like a top-five supplement that every man should be taking, no question.

But actually, for females, for hormonal health as well, estrogen, progesterone, for their fertility hormones and just for their hormones in general and for the health of their cycle can be very good.

It's a bit nasty to taste, isn't it?

It is.

You swallow a quick mouth.

That's how you should do it yeah you know but at the same time if you just want to add it to water and tea we went to mongolia last year actually wow to harvest the shilajit that's cool this was a crazy crazy sort of moment in time just going into the mountains on the west of mongolia on the border of kazakhstan there uh it's like going back in time and you know you can't go there without a translator yeah because it grows high up right it goes high up in the altitude and so the guys sort of know where to forage and we just went out there in the in the in the vans and

there's there's the rocks okay started digging just literally digging digging and then you just get these big rocks of Shilajit, and then they sort of go and purify it down into the liquid.

Holy crap.

So it's underground?

Yeah, it's underground at altitude in mountains.

Whoa.

Along the Himalaya lines, along the Eltai Mountains.

It's essentially, you know, compressed carbon for thousands of years.

And it's known as like rock sweat because the rocks start to sweat and ooze.

And that's this Shilajit resin.

So, you know, in a world where our topsoil has been so depleted and there's no minerals, we need to be having Shilajit to remineralize our bodies.

So, part of that, you know, testosterone level and energy level you're getting is just you're remineralizing your body because you're not getting it from your fruit and vegetables anymore.

Absolutely.

And guys, do your research on shilajit because there's some really bad quality brands.

You've got to be careful on Amazon these days

because you know, every Tom Dick and Harry buying product off Alibaba or Timu or something along those lines.

And when it's a supplement and you're ingesting it, you need to see COAs, you need to see lab reports, you know, you need to make sure that it's clean and pure.

Yeah, I don't get anything if it's not third-party tested for supplements anymore.

Yeah.

Because it's easy to want to buy the cheapest one on Amazon, but that doesn't mean it's the best one.

Yeah, and you're probably not getting, you're likely not getting the potency.

So it might be cheaper for 30 serves versus 20 serves, but hey, there's one tenth of the actual actives in it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I love what you guys are doing, man.

You're doing it right.

I think transparency is going to be needed for companies moving forward.

I think this is the year of it.

globally across many topics, but supplements being one.

And for us, specifically mushrooms, you know, we've tested a lot of products in the mushroom industry

just to gauge where our competitors are at.

We want to be having healthy competition.

And disappointingly, a lot of those products you find in Whole Foods and Sprouts and the likes, you know, they've got a lot of starch in them, a lot of grain.

So it's not filler that they're adding.

It's just when you grow mushrooms, you grow the mycelium.

which is the roots of the mushrooms, which is very medicinal.

You grow that on a grain.

And then ideally, and what you should be doing is extracting the mycelium from the grain.

A lot of these companies don't seem to be doing that.

And so when you do a grain test or a starch test for purity of just mushrooms, you're getting

one of the brands, one of the top-leading brands that we've seen in the U.S., 77% grain.

Oh, my gosh.

So 77% of that product is grain, not mushroom.

That's crazy.

Others have been 22%, 40%.

So, you know, that's just in the mushroom space, which is our specialty.

So we're not talking about omega oils and other things and how to test for purity there.

But within the mushroom space and these mushroom powders, a lot of them have high levels of grain and starch.

And you can do it very simply at home with iodine.

So if you add iodine to bread or to a potato, it's starch, it becomes black straight away.

If you do that to their mushroom powders and some of the mushroom powders in the market, they become black straight away.

So that's an easy way to do it.

Of course, you do lab tests as well.

But yeah, that sort of was a bit disappointing for us across the board.

But, you know, it's...

It's a space that's not heavily regulated supplements.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, third-party testing, COAs.

And at the end of the day, day, intuitively, do you feel the benefit?

Like, you're sort of saying, you feel the benefit from Shila Jit?

I do.

Plus, I take blood tests every year.

So I'm tracking it because some people start taking a bunch of things and they don't know if it's working, right?

So you're on that biohacking journey by the side.

Yeah, there's levels to it, but I am.

Yeah, there's some Brian Johnson level to it.

Stem cell.

I'm not on the stem cell wave yet.

Yeah, you don't need to be.

Yeah, I'm 27.

Have you gotten stem cells?

No, yeah.

I think I'm still too young.

So I'm 36.

So, you know, I think if I had a serious injury, you know, some of the athletes that we work with we know that they do that in the offseason or post fight which you should in an extreme environment for sure you know if you had a car accident and you had you know one of your one of your guys out there has got bad knees at the moment from rugby it's like hey there's probably uh you know an indication to potentially get it um but the low-level biohacking is critical as well the fasting the hydration sheila drew it's critical your supplements you know not everything under the sun, but just your foundational stuff.

Yeah, and your fasting and other things.

Sana's big for me.

I try to be as preventative and holistic as possible.

I got those EMF blockers, I have the same on my phone.

Yeah, um, yeah, air filters throughout the house.

Yeah, there's a lot of little things you could be doing.

Water is important, though.

Like, the type of source.

It's great water, so I appreciate that.

Yeah, usually try to bring out our own water.

Yeah, I try to drink glass or a can if I can.

Plastic is just so bad these days.

Yep, yep.

Yeah, it's uh, you know, you don't even have to not

trying to be healthy will actually put you backwards.

You know, in a way, like you actually have to be on that biohacking journey at the moment because the environmental toxins and just everything that's going on, seed oils, da-da-da-da, quality of air, quality of water.

It's just sort of a sad situation a little bit that we have to do that, but it's exciting too because it's opening up new frontiers.

Like you sort of mentioned Brian Johnson and these other guys that are really pushing the envelope of what we can do and how long we can live.

And really from a basic point of view, it's just like, what's my lifespan and what's my health span?

Like, you know, if I'm going to live to 90, but at 65, I'm taking six meds and I'm, you know, not able to play with my my grandkids or whatever else.

And you've already taken a third off your life.

100%.

There's that longevity element to it.

Yeah.

Average lifespan for a male in the U.S.

is 73 now.

Yeah.

It dropped.

That's his lifespan.

Yeah, that's less spanned.

That's health span.

Exactly.

We're like, can he play golf?

Or can he go play tennis with his buddies?

Or can he do the things he loves doing?

Probably not.

That probably stopped at 55.

Which is crazy.

So the average health span is, yeah, probably 50s, 60s, which is scary.

That's halfway for us.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, it's crazy when you think about it like that.

So we, you know, know, mushrooms, for us, we're very passionate about that longevity element, you know, and immune element as well.

As I said, the lion's name with the brain health.

So it's

one of the bullets in the arsenary or one of the weapons in the arsenary of longevity.

Yeah.

Have you seen any mushroom consumption in blue zones?

That's a good question.

Blue zones, I mean, mushrooms have been used for thousands of years, mostly traditional Chinese medicine.

So the racey mushroom in traditional Chinese medicine is known as the mushroom of immortality.

If you go over to China, you see it in all the temples.

It's artwork.

It's revered

because of its immune properties.

But I don't think it's been studied too closely in the blue zones.

Are there any blue zones in China?

There's one in Cali.

There might be one in Asia.

I'm not sure.

Betali has one.

I'm assuming they must have some sort of mushroom in their diet.

The

foundation for those was activity, wasn't it?

Community.

Yeah, community.

You know, movement.

Yeah.

Yeah, the one in Italy, I remember the movement because the hills were so steep.

Yeah.

So they had to go up and down every day.

Just getting your steps in is critical.

Huge.

You know, it's actually, it can be harder than you think.

We were in New York yesterday or two days ago walking around.

We're like, geez, we're doing a lot of walking.

We just tipped over 10,000 steps.

You know what I mean?

And which is sort of the base.

Yeah.

10,000 is not easy, man, these days.

Yeah.

Because we're inside like, what, 93% of the day now?

Getting that sun, critical.

Yeah, there's these foundational things while people can get excited by all the IV drips and things like that.

If you're not getting the sun, if you're not grounding, you know, if you're not moving, like, yeah, you're not putting yourself in a good situation for the long term.

When did you start becoming health conscious?

In Australia, it's always sort of, you know, playing sport as a young kid.

You just, it's very sport culture.

Yeah.

So it was just loving that.

And then being in the English Premier League was my first job.

I didn't make it into professional sports.

So therefore, I became a physical therapist, worked in the English Premier League.

So I was in a very high, I guess, performing environment with, you know, no budgets for our athletes.

So the English Premier League is like man you, Chelsea.

I worked at the Wolves.

Got it.

And so that environment was like no budgets, just pushed the envelope on how to get players back as quick as you can, how to get them performing as best as they can.

And so I just loved that environment.

But the lifestyle maybe didn't marry up with how I wanted to spend my time

in a career.

And so then, yeah, that's when I sort of got into the mushrooms because, hey, we can have impact at scale.

And then just over this last decade, and you would have seen it as well, it's just really caught fire.

You know, this whole and COVID definitely helped that.

Post-COVID, everyone was like more focused on health, more focused on natural health products and natural ways and modalities.

And social media has helped a lot with all the influencers and functional medical doctors, Dr.

Hyman, and all the rest that are doing a great job.

So, you know, Robert F.

Kennedy doing his thing at the moment.

So the guys at levels.

I like them.

So there's a lot of good work happening out there.

Casey and Cali Mead.

Super positive.

Yeah, going on Rogan.

Yeah.

And really.

And Ketler Kellogg's protesting.

Oh, that was great.

400,000 signatures.

Yeah.

That's unreal.

Yeah.

I mean, Kellogg's is an American brand where we all ate that growing up as kids.

Yeah.

All their cereals.

And now they're getting exposed finally.

Yeah.

And now, when I think about it, we grew up with wheat bicks in Australia.

We should have wheat bicks, but we would add sugar to wheat bicks and then that would be our breakfast.

And it was all the athletes would be saying, How many wheaties do you do?

You know, but it's this simple sugar carbohydrate.

It's probably one of the worst things you could have in the morning for performance.

You know what I mean?

So that power of marketing attached to the athletes.

But now, because of blood metrics and measures and just the conversation being more, I guess, front of mind yeah people just want something that works and people want to go down that health journey so it's super exciting because I think brands like Kellogg's can change tact if they want to yeah but if they don't they're going to cop the backlash of people like you know

Kelly means and low levels guys and all the other functional doctors protesting yeah well I think as more and more families and parents become aware of what they're feeding their kids they're going to have to make changes yeah or else they're going to stop buying them yeah and they'll feel it and I think this is going to come across every category now So I think if you're starting any sort of brand, supplement brand and these things, if you're not sort of deeply invested doing the right thing, you'll get found out at some point through web testing, through functional testing and these things.

Yeah.

You still out in Australia or did you move here?

I'm sort of, I mean, a lot of my friends in Australia think I'm the US because I've follow politics so much here and I follow sports here.

So I love the culture.

I love what you guys are doing.

You're definitely on the front foot with a lot of things and that patriotism.

I like, you know, there's an element of that that definitely I sort of resonate with um but australian based companies based in green bay wisconsin got it um so that's where we grow and extract everything we've got you know 20 plus stuff there um but yeah we sort of shipped to 100 countries now so we're sort of getting around a little bit you know launching in germany soon uk is going well uae so it's good the mushroom movement is is a global phenomenon which is just riding the wave of of biohacking and health and and purity and potency.

Yeah, mushrooms are fascinating.

I saw some documentary on Netflix about the mycelium network and how they all communicate with each other.

Did you see that?

It's fascinating.

Crazy.

It's the sort of the internet of the underground.

Yeah.

So it passes nutrients, passes messages, passes immune cells between different trees.

So allows trees to talk to each other.

It allows other, you know, rocks, allows trees to, you know, essentially take minerals from rocks by mycelium.

What?

And so they sort of, it's this interconnected web.

And once you sort of know what mycelium looks like, if you go into a healthy forest, you lift up a rotting log or you look into the soil, it's everywhere.

It's within every healthy ecosystem.

And so modern day farming, a lot of the farmers that we speak to, you know, they'll say, when I grew up as a child in the paddocks,

in the properties, there was mushrooms popping up everywhere post-rain in certain times of the year.

And now there's none of that because of the spraying, because of the tilling, because of that sort of modern agriculture.

So it's sort of a reflection of, you know, when there's mushrooms in the ecosystem of the forest or the farmland, it's a healthy ecosystem.

It's life.

Yeah, I never connected the dots on that, but that's so true.

I used used to see mushrooms everywhere.

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

And now it's not as common.

Yeah, you go into a rainforest, you'll see them everywhere once you sort of

get your eye in with it.

Yeah.

So that's sort of interesting.

And now it's obviously playing out into humanity with us taking more functional mushrooms and the research with psilocybin and everything that's going on.

And the research is very exciting.

It's not new.

There's plenty out there.

We just finished a study with the University of Queensland, the Brain Institute, which showed that our liquid extracts was more bioavailable and more infective than the the powders.

But the positive thing with the lion's mane, what it showed was within 24 hours, our lion's mane was able to regrow neurons.

So it's sort of not something you've got to take away a week or two, but under microscope, within 24 hours, you can see, if you imagine a tree with no branches, which is a neuron, within 24 hours, it's growing branches, which allows for better articulation, memory recall, sharpness, all of those things.

So they have a physiological response.

That's impressive within 24 hours because normally you've got to take supplements for weeks, months to see results on blood, right?

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

And the Shilajit is one of those, I think, where it's like it compounds.

Five days, 10 days, 15 days, you really start to get the momentum.

But with other ones like the Lion's Mane, it's sort of pretty instantaneous, which is, I think, why it's the popular one.

It's our best seller.

It's because of that, because people take it.

They go, yeah.

I'm going to start taking them before I film podcasts.

Maybe get me another level.

You'll be on.

Not that you're not already.

I love it.

No, I'm always looking for good biohacks, nootropics, and things.

I try to stay holistic.

Yeah.

You want to keep it harmonious with the body.

And that was what they founded the research around lion's mane because exogenously, so meaning putting things into the body with the BDNF as a peptide, it doesn't work because it's got to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Now, the brain and the body protects the brain more than anything, you know, and so things, getting things across the blood-brain barrier is quite difficult.

And so trying to make a sort of a replica of BDNF, the brain wouldn't accept it.

It wouldn't cross the blood-brain barrier.

But with lion's mane, with a compound and a pathway called herinases a which lies within the lion's mane this gets across the blood brain barrier and that doesn't produce bdnf but it helps the brain produce more bdnf so it's it's that natural thing like you said with some of those nootropics like modiphenol and these things they pick you up and they drop you as well and the long-term application is questionable i guess but short-term there's great benefits to have yeah but those other biohacks of things you can do long term that have long-term benefits are critical and so that just is about working with the body you know So, some of that new research on,

you know, I guess different peptides and things, it's still pretty new.

And so, I'm sort of a bit cautious of it because it's still new.

Yeah, I haven't taken any peptides yet, but I've heard both good and bad things about them for sure.

And again, it's quality source, trusted source, of course, and there's definitely some upside there, but you've got to bring an element of caution to it.

Yeah, for sure, especially with Ozempic just rampant.

Yeah, it's everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it in Australia pretty common, too?

Ozempic?

It is not not as common as here.

Okay.

And what I heard about Ozempic the other day was that it's a bit addicted.

You know, your body, once your body has it, then post, you know, it'll produce way more insulin and way more sugar spikes after taking it.

So it sort of becomes a bit addictive because of that.

Right.

So it's really hard to lose weight post-taking your Zempic.

So once you take it, it's like a gateway drug for your body, but then you're stuck with it.

That's why I cut coffee out recently.

I was becoming too reliant on it.

I was getting these heart palpitations.

I was like, damn, I need to chill with coffee now.

How many coffees were you doing?

Not a lot, but just like, I guess I'm more sensitive.

I'm not sure.

I was getting these wicked heart palpitations for like two weeks.

The Shilajit's a great swap out, you know, having Shilajit in some warm water in the morning with some, with some lemon in it, cordyceps as well.

You know, because we get that adrenal fatigue, one of the biggest things, you know, male and females are struggling with the cortisol levels.

High stress.

It's a high stress environment.

You know, whether it's our own mind causing that stress, whether it's social media causing that stress, whether it's chasing that goal, you know, and stress is great in many ways, but long-term stress, high cortisol levels over a period of time kill testosterone, they kill female hormones.

They are amazing for putting on weight.

And so that's one that sort of coffee can support in a negative way sometimes.

And so the Shilajit, the cordyceps, they're just smoother and more natural.

I think it's something that's

also there's a mold issue with coffee.

There is.

You know, I had Dave Asprey come on here.

Like 25% of coffee had mold or something crazy.

That was what Dave was famous for.

One of the things he was famous for, so we were on his podcast very early on.

He was the father of biohacking in many ways.

He blew up the collagen market.

He created the collagen market.

He created butter and coffee.

Talk about, you know, so he's always leading and he was leading that coffee space.

And I think, you know, are we doing any mycotoxin testing on Starbucks coffee or these other ones?

You know what I mean?

So got to be careful of that.

That mold that builds up in our body.

I come from an area in Australia called Byron Bay.

It's the most beautiful, serene environment.

You know, Matt Damon lives there, Chris Hemsworth lives there.

It's just picturesque, but it's also a very tropical environment.

And with tropical environments, it creates mold environments.

Mold for respiratory system, for skin health, and for brain health.

It's a silent one.

It's no joke.

I just bought a house and the first thing I did was got a mold test.

How was it?

Good or bad.

We're good.

Vegas is pretty dry.

Yeah, Vegas is great.

Yeah, I just did it to be safe.

But yeah, Florida is pretty swampy and humid.

So you've got to be careful.

Yeah, mold testing is critical.

No joke, man.

There's a lot of things you got to look out for these days.

It's a full-time job, you know?

And that's why it says like people like Dave and Dr.

Hyman, and there's many of them just doing great work in that space because you don't have time.

Paul Saladino, Carnival, MD.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, they're just all...

I had, Sorry, I would do a video the other day on salts, and I'm like, shit, I just, I had that salt with heavy metals.

Oh, yeah, sea salt, right?

Sea salt.

I just cut most of my salt out, actually.

Okay, yeah.

What for?

Well, sea salt specifically.

It just has heavy metals because they're getting it from the ocean and also the microplastics.

Yeah.

So now I don't even know where to get sea salt from.

Exactly.

You get to that point.

And so we're just, you know,

within mushrooms, that's just our focus.

And that's what we like to speak to.

You know, and then for other things, it's like, I've got to go to other sources because I don't have the time, energy, resources.

Yeah, because just understanding this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to specialize in one thing because you can't understand everything.

Yeah.

But

as a citizen of the world today, yeah, there's a lot of information, misinformation, censorship censorship going on of different topics.

And so trusted sources of information and trusted sources of nutrition, critical.

Yeah.

Critical.

A lot of different opinions.

You're space, man.

People be fighting on social media.

Yeah, there's not so much of that at the moment, but there's a lot of people coming into the space.

Every said, like, whenever with the CBD space, a couple of years ago, you know, over the last five years, we sort of saw every Tom, Dick, and Harry joins the party.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

That was a money grab.

That was a good one.

That was a money grab.

And therefore, the industry sort of died.

I've had a few expos and it's like, no CBD brands there anymore.

No CBD brands at independent pharmacies or Expo West.

It's not really happening.

And so that's sort of maybe the risk with mushrooms a little bit is that you get a lot of products in there that's just shit product, to be frank.

And then therefore you as a customer purchase it for $30, $50, and you're like, oh, that didn't work.

Lionsman doesn't work.

It's not that Lionsman doesn't work.

We did the university research.

It works within 24 hours.

But

again, it's that sourcing.

They associate it with a bad product.

It's just the quality.

With the the category, not the brand.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's that's going to be tricky.

Yeah.

Mushrooms I'm excited about, especially psilocybin.

Yeah.

I'm a fan of that.

Have you done any research on that?

We haven't strayed too much from the functional mushrooms.

The research is profound.

It's amazing.

It's just the regulatory elements for us are like

it's going to take its time.

Yeah.

And in the U.S., I guess, as well, you know, it's going to take its time, a bit like CBD.

And so we didn't want to get interrupted with that.

But we're in full support of brands that push that forward, push the science forward.

The whole entheogen space of other plant medicines and mushrooms, there's a lot of research out there for veterans

post-PTSD and elements of that.

So mental health, obviously mental health is an epidemic in itself at the moment, male mental health, female mental health, young suicides.

So there's huge application.

And I guess as we go towards this more technological world, actually, there's an element of us needing to go back to nature.

Yeah.

And go back to nature, be in nature more, connect with nature more, consume nature more,

just to optimize and to buy a hack.

Yep.

I'm a huge fan of grounding and trying to eat as natural as possible.

I think the modern American diet eats 70% process now.

It's natural.

Process food, disgusting.

So you guys do a lot of things well,

but like that's not reaching the mainstream.

You know, like this water is really good and there's other things that you do.

You can only get that in LA.

Exactly.

So it's very like niche.

Yeah.

You know, and so.

But you've got 330 million people.

So it's a big ship to steer.

It's fascinating because we have the best Olympic athletes.

We win every year, but we also are one of the more unhealthy countries for our

money that we have.

The corn, the soy, the high fructose syrup,

those things like just in so much of your products.

It's almost everything process.

It's disgusting.

The seed oils.

Is it that bad in Australia with the food dyes and everything?

We're pretty healthy.

I think we're pretty healthy.

But it's a smaller ship to manage 30 million people.

And everyone lives coastal.

And just living coastal, I think, or somewhere where there's good weather all the time, I think that helps a little.

You know, when you're on the coast and you're at the beach, often you're moving, you're active, you want to eat fresh.

We've got good grass-feed-fed meat.

We've got good agriculture.

The corn, soy, you know, because a lot of it here is subsidized.

It only exists because it's subsidized.

If it wasn't subsidized, it's not a business.

And so we don't have that subsidies to those industries to the extent that you guys do, perhaps,

which is part of it.

But yeah, we're very health conscious, you know, and as you spoke about Olympic athletes, I think per capita medal count, like we would win.

Really?

You know, I don't know.

I don't want to make a big statement there, but for 30 million people, the amount of medals we win,

based on that, you know, we're top couple.

Okay, yeah, because we have 11 times the population.

So we got to divide our medal count by 11.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We can do a quick math after this on the back of the envelope.

Yeah, see who really won.

Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

That's a good thing to do, though, because China has a billion people.

Yeah.

So obviously their chances of winning.

So if it can win 20 gold medals, that's not great.

Yeah.

So it's a good.

But per capita, we're reasonably healthy, but I think across the board, seed oils are bad, glyphosate bad.

You know, these things are global epidemics.

And at the same time, there's global solutions that are low cost and that are free and that are cheap, grounding, sun, you know, getting in the ocean, getting in fresh bodies of water, fasting, foundational.

And then the mushrooms and other supplements are complementary to that to really take you, you know, get that extra 5% to 15%.

Absolutely.

I can't wait to take these.

So are these in pill format?

Liquid extract.

Oh, liquid.

Liquid extract.

So you just put put in your water yeah yeah we believe in the liquid extract for that was sort of the study we did with the university of queensland at the brain institute we compared powders mushrooms lion's mane to liquid extract seven times more effective seven times seven times yeah within 24 hours that's good to know yeah for people watching this because our stomach is just uh it's a mince meat it just it just chews everything up acidic you know it just wants to break things down that's its job so it's not so discerning at times and so it'll break things down that are beneficial and so if you're taking capsules and powders a lot of those are digested in the stomach whereas with the liquids you can take it sublingually under your mouth go straight into your vascularization of your sublinguals straight into the blood that's really the the ultimate currency of a supplement is getting it into your bloodstream to get into your cell so anything that goes through the gut unless it's directly trying to affect the gut you know like a probiotic a prebiotic then you know that's why iv drips are popular as well we're getting it straight into the blood i wonder if aspirin brian johnson know that because they take a lot of physical pills yeah there's definitely a reason and application for that.

But as we see AI and tech and all these things advance

so quickly and so fastly, it's like, why the hell are we still taking capsules and powders?

You know, like that was a technology that was created 20 years ago.

In some cases, there is application for it, but it's not the future of how to take your supplements.

The future is liquid, liposomal,

either or or both.

So liposomal, you know, it has a phospholipid fat layer around it.

So in a metaphoric sense, it's a bodyguard protecting the the compound, making sure that it gets into the cell.

Future is Elon Musk robot hand-feeding you the supplement.

There's a whole lot of things going on there.

Yeah, exactly.

That's true.

Robotics, AI, you know, Neuralink, all these things.

That's what future is that?

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll see.

Our kids will have to deal with that.

Are you using any AI with the company?

We use it for sure across different elements, you know, ChatGPT, mid-journeys for content creation.

And nothing at scale,

nothing that's like been a game changer, so to speak.

Although within content creation and editing, for sure there's been quicker elements, clipping and things of that nature.

But like with every sort of tech, there's the early adoption, there's a plateau, and then there's the mass adoption at scale.

And I think it's not that far away.

But AI's, it's been game-changing for sure.

But you see a lot of reels.

This will change your business 10fold and 20-fold.

And it's all clickbait.

It's definitely overhyped.

I do use OpenAI, ChatGPT, pretty often.

It's

good for personal things too.

Finding restaurants, finding good hotels, finding travel itinerary, planning out big.

For sure, yeah, yeah.

I just put in my dates that I was in at the US, what's the best flights to catch at this time?

I've got to have meetings here and here.

And it just did my itinerary.

That's smart.

Three weeks, eight cities, which flight to catch.

Damn.

Yeah.

So it was.

It was good there.

That is cool.

Versus an EA or a PA, you know.

Right.

And then you've got to go back and forth.

Back and forth, exactly more time on that and time on their front as well.

Yeah.

But they could be doing other tasks.

For sure.

What other cities you got planned this trip coming to the end now so finished in la but we've been to went to our first nfl 49ers game nice um those guys invited they're good this year too they're doing okay they did better last year but they've got mccaffrey out mccaffrey was um a customer of ours so i didn't know much about nfl and christian was purchasing our product and so some of the other players reached out and so from there yeah their whole squad's like wow loving the mushrooms well done man that's one of the best running backs in the league yeah yeah so that's super super stoked about that because i didn't know who he was and we looked him up.

What?

It's like, she, oh, yeah, I guess you're in Australia.

Yeah, Australia is not as big, but football's different over there.

Football is different.

So, we went and watched that game, went to the Giants,

was in Vegas.

Perfect timing, catch up with yourself and the UFC Performance Institute.

So, meetings in Columbus.

So, yeah, it's

a bit of a mix and match, but I think, yeah, eight cities in 22 days.

Well done, man.

She legit, mushrooms, right?

Laposomal, we're here.

That UFC Institute's no joke.

I've been there.

Yeah, it's the Wellness Center.

It's amazing.

Yeah, Yeah, it's beautiful.

They got the cold plunge.

They got the cryo.

Yeah, it's a cool spot.

And everything trickles down from there.

And so what you see in these institutes and these clubs will become mainstream in a couple of years.

And you're already seeing that with all the biohacking labs getting set up and cryo and all of that.

So it's a fascinating time because, you know, I don't know, within your own friendship circle, are you finding people drinking as much?

What are they doing to socialize?

They're not drinking anymore, to be honest.

At least the people I'm friends with.

Yeah, we used to go out to clubs when I was like early 20s, but no one really does that anymore.

And it's not because, you know, you don't want to have fun.

It's just not as fun as doing other stuff.

Like the thing you're hosting, the event you're hosting tonight, the gaming and all of that,

that's what people want to be doing now.

Yeah, gaming's huge these days.

And just hanging out with like-minded people, a networking event or, you know, however it comes across, just to meet good people that are aligned.

And so the drinking culture is sort of fading out.

I think it's going to take a massive hit.

Yeah.

The alcohol industry.

I'm assuming their numbers are already dropping.

I haven't looked into it in two months.

Beer sales dropping.

Beer sales, yeah.

So some of those companies are investing in Australia.

One of those big beer companies bought a health supplement company.

Really?

You know, bought a company called Blackmore's, which is one of the big health supplement companies because they know they need to divest now because that sort of game is finishing up.

I can see that.

I also see soda companies buying up healthy foods companies.

CIT chips just got acquired by Pepsi.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So there's light at the end of the tunnel when you think of like, oh, there's all these

big companies that are promoting negative products, but they're only doing that because that's where the money is.

Facts.

And so once the money changes direction, they'll change direction real quick.

Yeah, because there is this narrative of painting these companies as evil.

Yeah.

But it's, that's not their main intention to make people unhealthy.

Their main intention is to provide value for shareholders.

Right.

And so if that product does it the best, that's the direction they're going.

And so that also flips the equation on the power of the consumer and the power of the dollar that you spend.

If you stop spending it on that product and you buy that product, that CEO is going to get fired or have to do some npd and make a product very similar to that right if that makes sense yeah yeah i wonder how the soda industry is doing too it must be hurting well there's olipop i think i don't know is it is that a popular is that healthy halo top and ollipop yeah i've seen both of those did one of them get acquired or something maybe i'm not too familiar with that space it's so busy yeah the the pop soda space in the us and cans there's so much going on but it's quite innovative

and i think the best products will win yeah um in the end so then therefore that's where the market will go for sure yeah i think it's a step in the right direction healthy is pretty subjective to most people i i guess for most people that would be considered healthy but there's still added sugar in some of those okay i didn't i can't i don't know what's on the back of the label so that's what the devil is in the detail always always i use this yuka app have you seen that oh why you're that yeah so i scan everything i don't think it flags seed oil so you still have to manually look but it's pretty good the seed oil scout as well have you seen that yeah that's a great one so the founder won't come on the show because he's so worried about being um putting a face to it okay he's got some powerful enemies okay yeah yeah well it's because he's exposed a lot of you know bad like uh fast food chains and everything i mean you go into most chains both like franchise food and also supermarkets and the seed oils everywhere so you just gotta like even the hot bar at the at the grocery store i know it's it's upsetting it's like oh i want that oh so you've got to end up eating at home cooking at home all the time you know which is annoying it's annoying especially when you're traveling like you

how do you manage that on the go more fasting Oh, yeah.

To be honest.

And even from brain clarity and focus, it's just shit legit in water with the lines, made with the cordyceps.

And I could just have one meal a day.

And then when I have that one meal a day, it's a gorge session.

It's a big meal, but it's got to be pretty specific.

So, and just keep it simple, like, you know, a good steak.

Yeah.

Some veggies as a bonus.

But even just a steak and, you know, something, some fruit.

One meal a day.

Wow.

Yeah.

I've gotten down to two a day.

I wonder if I could pull off one a day.

Your metabolism is probably a bit different.

It's pretty fast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My resting metabolic rate is over 2,000 calories a day.

Yeah.

So one meal would be tough because then I'd have to eat like 4,000 in them.

You've got to gorge then.

But then just throughout the day, also just like the jerkies that are out there, the beef jerkies, things of that nature, you know, keeping it, keeping the insulin spike down.

The insulin spike is sort of another silent assassin for our health.

Every time we have an insulin spike, we're promoting aging.

Damn.

And if we're promoting aging, we're promoting inflammation.

If we're promoting inflammation, we're promoting disease.

Wow.

So the cascade starts with insulin.

That's why I really like the Levels brand.

That's why I like anyone that's sort of promoting,

you know, just low sugar, but without substituting, of course, nasties into it.

Right.

But that sugar is, you know, is the deadliest.

I didn't know that.

So anytime you eat dessert, you're getting that insulin spike.

If you get an insulin spike, you know,

you want it to be smoother.

Got it.

So keto snacks can be good.

You know, I bought from Whole Foods yesterday some keto barks.

Yeah.

Because I wanted like something, you know, some chocolate, but I didn't want to get that sweet hit especially late at night you take that sweet hit and you don't move you lay in bed it goes all night oh geez because you're not working at all you're not moving it wow you're not moving it so what about a banana or like a fruit natural sugars i mean some i'm not an expert in the glucose space and the sugar space but from the data i've seen it still is the same still acts the same

all right i need to be aware of that so i think that's a that's a big one i'm not perfect at it but i know i get a better sleep and i record my sleep when i'm not having those late meals when I'm not having those sugar spikes that go throughout the night.

And so,

for sure, you want to be eating bananas and fruit, it's just timing.

Timing of it, so maybe in the morning or

noon, and also post

protein, post-fats, it digests better.

If you have a banana on its own on an empty stomach, that's not good.

Oh, really?

So, you want to have some fats first and some protein first.

That minimizes the spike,

minimizes the length of the spike.

Damn, good to know.

It's a bit of an art there.

I've only come across this really in the last 18 months

and tweaked just based on that.

So, the timing timing of what you're eating matters matters yeah timing of your your sort of your your proteins and your fats first and then your carbohydrates last and your simple sugars after that got it that's like the opposite of restaurants though because they give you the bread first exactly yeah you're getting that spike first yeah yeah and then you're getting the meat last yeah and i don't think it's intentional as to why they're doing probably not

they want to fill you with the bread they want to fill you with the bread yeah yeah damn that's good to know yeah yeah when i was in europe you know that because you're walking everywhere as well walking post uh eating as well is amazing, which we don't do.

Not at all.

We go from eating either on the couch or at the dinning table to the couch, you know, and just sit there and watch the game or watch something and watch a movie.

So just that movement post-eating does wonders for your digestion as well.

I need to do that.

I need to start taking like a thousand steps after everything.

The list is long of everything we're talking about to do, but once you start integrating one by one, it just becomes automatic.

You just don't, you don't eat things with seed oils.

You don't, you know, and I've definitely seen people who are really religious on not eating seed oils and their skin looks better, their health does look better.

100% for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You could get extreme with it.

I think whatever's comfortable for you.

Yeah.

I also have some fries from time to time.

Yeah.

I'll eat some fries once in a while.

Eat a burger from somewhere.

You know, you guys do burgers well here.

I love burgers.

Yeah.

What's Australia known for, food-wise?

What do we know?

Good meat.

It's amazing meat.

Okay.

You know, amazing grass.

Oh, waggy, right?

I see that over here sometimes.

MB9, like the highest level, just really, just like, it's a spiritual experience when you eat good meat.

Yeah.

It's just like...

I agree.

i had a friend he was a vegan we had a birthday party and um you know i said one of our friends said fruit my birthday wish i don't want you to eat i want you to eat some meat and because the vegans sort of plant-based well-intentioned but over a five-year period plus you start to see the wear and tear oh yeah you start to see the lack of iron the lack of nutrients in the body no doubt that the eyes the the hair that the the menstrual cycles reporting the teeth those things start to take place and so and some of our friends who are male athletes, you know, the first five years, they performed well on it.

Second half of those five years, they sort of didn't have the energy, the testosterone, whatever it may be, to sort of train as hard or to fight as hard or to compete as hard.

And so, anyways, he had this MB9, which is sort of one of the highest standards of grass-fed wagu you can have.

And yeah, it was just a spiritual experience.

And so meat is amazing in Australia because we've got great land, great pastures.

Outside of that, what else?

I mean, the milk thing is still a bit of an issue there.

It's pasteurized, so it's not great.

I love raw milk.

Raw milk is great.

But yeah, our ingredients, we've got a very fertile land.

We're sort of known as the food bowl of China.

Really?

A lot of people.

So you buy to China.

A lot of middle-class China will want Australian products for the quality, for the purity.

And so that's where we sort of started with the mushrooms.

It's like, why would we not grow and extract our own mushrooms versus buy from other countries that we maybe don't know the full story of the supply chain?

And so that's sort of a bit of Australian culture.

And I think America carries that culture as well.

You like American grow and you like American made.

There's trust there.

There's quality there.

And so that's a big thing.

But yeah, the meat and just general produce in Australia is really good.

Nice.

I've been there once.

Where'd you go?

Yeah, I went to Melbourne and Sydney.

What'd you think?

Hot as f ⁇ .

It was hot, man.

Where'd you go?

Oh, my God.

January or hot.

I went summer.

Yeah, it's hot.

My skin was peeling off.

It can be too hot.

It can be too hot.

Even now when I get back, it's November and it's going to get really hot.

So I'm thinking, oh, where do I go for a month or two just to get some relaxation?

Oh, it's brutal.

My skin was peeling.

I did eat a kangaroo.

What did you think?

Good.

It's lean.

It's like venison.

Yeah,

it's very

lean and it's wild as well.

So no antibiotics, no farming.

Yeah.

None of that.

You know, none of that.

None of those vaccination schedules and things of that nature.

So that's pretty pure meat.

I think Australians should be eating more kangaroo.

If I spoke to most Aussies, they probably haven't had kangaroo.

What?

I know.

It's crazy.

That's crazy.

I like bison over here.

I love bison.

Bison's amazing.

God, yeah.

Rogan put me onto that.

Bison and venison.

Yeah.

And elk.

Have you had elk?

I haven't had elk.

There's a company called Force of Nature Meats.

Okay.

If you go to Whole Foods, they sell bison and elk.

Okay, I see the bison.

I'm going to need to look harder for the elk.

But yeah, those things.

And again, like, you don't need to eat a lot of it.

Nah.

It's very sustainable just having quality.

Yeah.

You eat the organs too, like Liver Kings?

I have to.

Yeah.

You eat it.

I don't eat it like Liver Kings.

He's got the heart and he's just munching on it, you know, munching on the liver.

But I mean, in saying that, yeah, sometimes we have raw liver at at home and we just, you know, beat it down with some raw milk.

It's a good breakfast.

I don't eat breakfast often, but some raw liver, you know, natural honey, organic honey that's unpasteurized, that's raw, with some raw milk.

Like, that's a super meal right there.

Absolutely.

I love it, man.

Well, Julian, where can people find the brand and learn more about?

LifeCycle is spelt.

C-Y-K-E-L.

So, you know, we started the business nine years ago.

We didn't know anything about business.

And so we made it hard for people to find us on Google.

But thankfully, social media, and thankfully, we got some videos that went viral.

And so, lifecycle.com on Instagram.

You know, we're on a US company more than an Australian company today, even though the accent's Aussie.

You know, we do most of our business over here, we love it here.

So, we've got our team here.

So,

Amazon, you know, we ship from Green Bay.

So, that's what's happening.

Love it.

We'll link it below.

I'll also start taking it and document my journey on Instagram.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

Check out the links, lifecycle.

See you guys next time.

Thanks.