#005 - Joshua Church - He Built a $20M Company By Partnering With the Universe

Josh, you are a Forbes 30 under 30 founder. You're an author. You are a podcast host yourself. You're founder of a company that is no longer Willers, but Edge Theory Labs that was a $20 million company within three years. What I'm most fascinated to know, mate, and where I'd like to begin with you, is who are you in the absence of? Beautiful question. Well, who am I? We're going to get deep on this one right off the bat. I'm the awareness of the consciousness that is that. I'm the awareness and the observer of the character that I'm playing that plays these different roles. That's who I am. That's the space between. And I would say in a more literal sense, who am I? I would say I'm a passionately curious explorer who's. And student of life. And I think I've received so many blessings and so much I've done already in the 31 years that I've been on this planet because I really do view it that way that we came here to explore and to experiment. And so I view my life as one great experiment and expression of what we came here for. So in the absence of those things, I am, yes, I'm the awareness, I am the awareness of that. And I would say I am the experimenter, the player experimenting with all. Big time. Beautiful answer. How has your. And in doing my research for this show, there were things I learned about you that I never knew. You know, the story with your leg. And yeah, collapsed lung. Your moment of collapsed lung. Yep. How do you see those moments have shaped that description? Yeah, it's a great question. And in my book, Cosmic Breadcrumbs, we've got a copy of it on the table here. You'll read the full story and the full different, the health journey that I have been on that led me to my rock bottom moment when I was 19 years old, coming off of another major surgery that almost killed me. And I was really in that line between life and death, it felt. And just felt broken as I was recovering from that surgery that went wrong, the doctor nicked an artery and so I had internal bleeding and had blood transfusions, was in a hospital, it was touch and go. At 19? At 19, yep. And so I'm coming off of that recovering and I had four major, certain major operations up to that point, almost had my leg amputated from a rare injury that they had to save. I was born with a collapsed lung. So clearly it's just like all these things happening and I'm like, what do I gotta do to catch a break? Like what the heck is going on here? And I was living in chronic pain. Yeah, yeah. And I just, I was at my wit's end. I was like, I don't know what to do. And honestly, like if this is the way that it is, then is this life really worth living? And that was a real moment for me at 19. And the thing I thought was, well, there has to be a better way. Like there has to be some better way because up to that point, the best that the doctors could do was give me a painkiller prescription to Percocet and tell me pick up golf, like good luck. And I just refused to believe that that was, that was gonna be my story. And so it forced me to explore, to experiment with, okay, well, let me go try this thing called yoga that my uncle has started doing and is raving about and he transformed his body with. Like, okay, maybe this thing called meditation as I'm laying into my first yoga class at the end during Shavasana and for the first time, since I can remember, I felt just a brief relief from pain and I was like, oh, whoa, stillness. What's that stillness? Okay, let me go do some meditation. What's that? Mindfulness, what's that? Breath work, cold immersion. So it kind of got me in this mode of like, okay, what can I do that has an effect on my physiological, mental, emotional, spiritual state? And I started experimenting with that. So I would say those, those early challenges, collapsed lung, the surgeries, the operations led me to a place where one, it forced me to experiment if I wanted to find relief. And two, I would say it was, I believe that we all come here, I believe that we all come here with certain work to do and certain healing that we're incarnating here for. And it was just, it was too obvious to me that like, there's something with my physical body. Like this is a pattern that I cannot, I cannot ignore. And so, let me lean into it. - You took the question out of my mouth. I was gonna say, I believe that too, that our soul comes here because it has something to learn. Collapsed lung, the surgeries you've been through, the process you've been down. How do you make sense of them? - You know, I don't know if I'll fully make sense of it until I'm back into the part where the greater part of me is. - You go, what the fuck was that? What was it? - Yeah, exactly. To be able to see the full context. But no, I think, look, it's, it's brought me deeper within myself and a relationship with myself. And it's brought me to this path of spirituality, of deeply knowing myself. - Totally. - And being able to tap into the wisdom that my body has to offer. Because before I think like so many of us, so many of us athletes, I know this is part of your story as well. - Massive, yeah. - We recognize that most of the time it's like, we're really living like just with our head chopped off. It's like, we're just living with our neck up. Like we're in our mind, we're in our head. We're telling our mind, our mind is telling our body, body do this. Body, why are you failing me? Body, keep up. Body, push through the pain. And it's a one-way street. And as I started healing, I started, I started to recognize that, oh, whoa, this is a two-way street. Body, thank you. Body, you have wisdom for me. Our gut is our second brain. Something like 90% of our serotonin and dopamine is actually starts in our gut. Like our body is giving us this wisdom that we have, our intuition. And so it tapped me into that. Which is a practice and is, I'm so grateful for, 'cause I live my life entirely differently, number one. And number two, I'm on a path of service to support others in that process as well. I'm getting ready to leave a week from today to go out to Iceland to facilitate another retreat out there and to be able to share these practices of breathing journeys and breath work and cold water immersion to create the environment for people to dive deeper and to build a relationship with themselves and with their body is the greatest gift I've ever received. And it's a blessing that I get to be of service and to support people on their journey, to do the same. - Would you say that if you were to make sense of it, just after that answer, what I'm hearing you say is the ability to be able to listen. - Yes, listen, the ability to be able to listen and then take action from that place and to be of service. Like it's clear to me that I chose to come here. I think like many people and many listeners to this, - Yeah. - I believe that I'm here. That I'm here to be of service for others. I believe we all are in some level. And it was just very clearly coded. Like, well, here's your curriculum. Here's your path. I didn't have to go guessing of like, what am I here to do? What, you know, so that's a blessing in that. It's like, well, life unfolds and here you go. - Big time, yeah. - Here's your curriculum. - Yeah. You wrote a book called "Cosmic Breadcrumbs", building a profitable partnership with the universe. That sounds like the greatest, maybe seed planted of what the deepest place we can listen from is. It's not even inside of ourselves. It's to what the universe is communicating to us. What does that even mean? What does it mean to build a profitable relationship with the universe? - I'll first start with the title, "Cosmic Breadcrumbs" and what that means. And to me, there's a, what's coming to mind is a, there's a great Steve Jobs, the commencement speech. He did at Stanford. I'm sure you've seen it. - That's so good. - It was epic. And he said, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward. And he was sharing with the students about how he was completely gutted when he got let go and he left Apple for the first time, but then that led him to go start Nexus and then to be able to bring that back and create the iPhone essentially. Like it made so much sense in hindsight, but during it, I was ripped up. And so he talked about like, you remember you can only connect the dots looking backward and not forward. And so for me, that really stuck with me. And I observed in my journey that I didn't really know where I was going. I still don't know really where I'm going, but I know how to get there. And I know that all I need to do is follow the next indicated step or this breadcrumb that I believe God, the universe leaves for us. Like we're on a cosmic scavenger hunt out here. Whatever your deepest goal is, your deepest desire is, whatever that life of most alignment is, you are being guided there on the path of least resistance. - Mm-hmm. - And you don't need to see the full picture. All you need to do is focus on the next step in front of you. It could be having a great conversation with someone to get on you and meeting them. And then the next thing you know, you guys are working together, right? Like it can be something like that. That's the next breadcrumb. Okay, and then you don't know where that leads. - Yeah. - And I think about like all, think about all the breadcrumbs that were followed in this kind of divine tapestry and synchronization that led to you being here. Like Michael Singer, one of my favorite teachers, he says, think about how your great, great, great, great, had to meet your great, great, great, great grandfather. Like if it wasn't raining, that day and the and even going even before it's like they met they met at a lake as they were you know going to harvest their their crops and like if you go all the way back if the if the asteroid didn't hit the earth and create the the environment and the rain didn't come to fill that lake there is no lake and then they don't meet there right so it's incomprehensible when you think about all these breadcrumbs that we have all followed to this point that allow us to meet other people to have relationships to to build life in that way and so i've always said follow the breadcrumbs yeah like when when whenever anybody asks me like what should i do next like you know inside whatever that little voice is that says oh i'm interested in this oh i have this this the seed seedling of an idea follow that breadcrumb because you don't know where that might need you have an impulse to call someone or to reach out for someone follow that because that sets off this cosmic chain that changes the life yeah changes the future entirely and i and i really do believe so that's what it means to follow the breadcrumbs and and and my story and the way that it's written is the the first part is kind of all of my healing journey and and myself of getting onto this path of of of doing the inner work of of experimenting and experiencing that there's something more out here and really getting onto my career path leading up to starting edge theory labs and then the second part of the book is the rise and fall of edge theory labs and all of its glory and all of its mess it's about bringing these principles into a business environment and and and what happens and how sometimes the experiment needs to fall apart to get the greatest lessons and so with cosmic breadcrumb is building a profitable partnership with the universe is that is that i truly believe that like in the alchemist that that when you desire something the whole universe conspires to help you make it happen and whatever your deepest desire is like we are being guided there and the universe like what if what if the universe has your back what if god actually wants you to succeed and be successful and is leading your way there and all you got to do is take action it's like our job billy it's so small like we need to do so little i've learned that more and more it's something i'm really focusing on is like our job is so small like we don't control the the weather or how the sun comes up or that this plant right here still remembers how to do photosynthesis so we can breathe like there's so much out of our control even within our body so we don't have to remember how to breathe or for our for our liver to release enzymes that support our our filtering process our kidneys it's like it's it's it's incomprehensible and the more that i've focused on gratitude towards that great mystery and yeah building that relationship the more i'm like we just literally got to show up with a good attitude we got to like wipe our ass and show up on time and the rest is taken care of yeah and it's in our it's in our need or feeling that we have to do more that we're actually interfering with the process right my questions you just referenced the alchemist my favorite book when you really want something the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it what happens when you no longer want something what happens when you no longer want something the universe conspires to help you achieve it because that's a desire too yeah how does that you said when you really want something the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it edge unbelievably successful but then edge crumbles yeah how do you right how do i reconcile that yeah because like i wanted edge to succeed yeah i think that there's there's a few different levels of of of desires in those ways and and to me like a fundamental belief that i hold is that i'm on the path of least resistance and i read about this in the book as well because i wrestled with this break that down for me that's great i love that i'm on the path of path of least resistance like i truly believe i'm on the path of least resistance so like there's the way that i see it is that there's myself right here and i'm here joshua church sitting here in the physical form yeah i do believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience we're not humans that have some sort of spiritual experience it's we are spiritual beings we chose to incarnate we chose to come here and to focus our energy a small part of our greater energy into this human form we are connected to source we are connected to god we are connected to the larger part of ourself i call that our inner being my inner being so the way and this comes from a lot of abraham hicks who's a big student of as well and so the way i see it is that that in in in the energetics realm right and we can start to measure this now too which is so cool so all these conversations used to be super we were actually like this is quantum physics now yeah but in in the in the spiritual realm in the realm of energy the greater part of me remains in this physical form like it's just a small part of me that's focused right here and so the greater part of me sees the bigger picture because we're we're limited in this time space continuum and construct of like of of illusion of separation we have this illusion right now that you and i are separate and different even though we're not we're the same energy focused and so um that that illusion of separation and and because we're focused in the small form right now we might think that we have all declared and we want something so badly but the greater part of us sees the bigger picture and might see and might actually see what our true desire is even if it might be against what we think in this moment that that that to me is a path of least resistance and the the simple way to say that is like when you get when you see something that that seems to like when you get when you don't get what you want sometimes but it works out better has that ever happened to you right where it's like i wanted this thing so badly i didn't get it but it led to something even better i believe that like that was part of your inner being your great the greater part of your design and true desire like your inner being's desire that's guiding you on the path of least resistance so even though like me in human form wants this thing so badly yeah i have to surrender to to god to my higher self and trust that that that they've got a different vantage point that even i can't see and so that that invites an opportunity to live with a sense of surrender and when i started to do that and i read about this in the book when we were at the edge of edge and we were trying to figure out are we going to pull this off are we going to be able to pull out of this what do we do here can we can we make this work how what what's going on here i want this to work so badly but now we're fate we're staring off the cliff in the abyss and my prayer became god lead me where you need me most i surrender to you if it's in the highest good of myself and everyone around to for this to work then i pray that will work if it's in the highest good of myself and everyone else around that this doesn't work and then i transition into something else then that's that's what i pray for so instead and this is kind of the up level here is is that my desires really have become to be in alignment with my higher self and trust that that is what i'm going to be and i'm going to be in alignment with whatever's in the greater good and being more disattached i should say unattached to whatever form that takes and more attached to the function of how is that going to feel and and what will that bring me and and how will that impact others around me does that make sense i think it makes sense more than you could imagine in a bodily sense and i'm curious for the person listening to this it's like what does that mean practically yeah you're running a massive company you gotta make this like yeah don't just fucking surrender and then yeah exactly yeah yeah make this make sense from for yeah for those listening practically yeah for sure um this was one of the most difficult things that i've navigated doing because you know there's all these different stakeholders that we have right we have our team yeah people like some of my closest friends my family that are that are working with us on our team that we're employing yeah so what shutting down means is means telling our best friends hey sorry you're out of a job and health care and all these things sorry yeah it means telling our investors yeah some of which were friends or family of mine calling people up some of which were celebrities we built relationships with calling them up and saying hey sorry we lost your money we're out of business it means calling up our thousands of customers and being able to send a notice out that says hey sorry i know you just spent five thousand dollars to buy our product but we don't have our we're not going to be around to support you anymore and we're gonna have to figure something out there which we did but we're gonna have to figure something out there and sorry yeah it means all of that it means wrestling with whatever i'm sure that that there was backlash there oh yeah oh yeah there was there there was some there was some really tough backlash there that um that that forced a lot of growth for me too i one day i woke up to an email of um of someone that's a customer an angry customer that sent a message with the subject line you're a fraud it's a great subject line to wake up to i read about this in the book as well and um and he said and he just went off he called me a spineless weasel he said um i'm gonna make it my main objective to make sure that whatever you do next will fail and people know the real character of who you are right that hits that's like okay all right all right how do i adapt with this how do i move with this how do i get through the feelings of this yeah exactly just accompanied with some breath work you're a fraud and that's and that's that's the real work and and in that moment i realized this is why i do breath work this is why i do ice bath this is why i train yeah it's to be able to handle real life shit like this yeah how do i respond to that and it triggered it triggered me don't don't get me wrong it triggered me and it sent me down this path of wrestling how do i do i respond to this if at all how do i respond what do i do sent me down a spiral right and which led to great growth opportunity and i'm grateful i had some support and mentorship in my corner to be able to help me navigate things like this but like you know i'm not a fan of wrestling i'm not a fan of wrestling i'm not a fan of wrestling Yeah. So practically to the listener, it's like, it's all great. And Danny to talk about these kind of esoteric. like spirituality surrender but it's like how do you deal with them you got to like pick up the phone and yeah you know you got to call up uh dana white from ufc you're working on a massive deal with and be like hey sorry or the la rams who were now the official sponsor cold cold tub partner with and we just set them up with a bunch of tubs and we got to call up their athletic director the director of their their their personal development and be like hey sorry we got to pull out of this partnership we can't do this anymore so it was really really really tough and the thing that got me through that was truly truly truly believing that i'm on the path of least resistance that somehow this is exactly what i need to be going through and it it might be a little delusional to believe that but billy i will gaslight myself into believing what is best for me every single day of the week yeah absolutely yeah delusion is not a bad trait to carry no no and so i i i held on to that belief that this is because i i know it's so much in my core that i am on the path of least resistance and that that what if it starts with a question what if this is exactly what i need to go through what if this is preparing me for everything i've asked for yeah what if this is exactly the lesson i need to learn right now to prepare me for whatever else is coming next and and i believe that and it didn't it was nothing i could have done on my own to be able to have conversations with people like cat with people like chad yeah i'm with close people in my circle with my coaches and mentors and with my family and my parents to be able to have these conversations literally every day all day reminding myself of that belief was what it took yeah you must have had a master class in difficult conversations over the course of it so let's go there then yeah great love to go learn about difficult conversations oh so much billy i learned so much about difficult conversations and and really the i learned about that which started earlier on during edge when we had to start when we were starting to make cuts right because you can imagine if we're having to shut down a company like there's there's a lot of things that happen before we get to that point where we're like we have to pull the plug yeah and and so it started really let's say we shut down and um we made our notice november 1st so it was really in august it was more like july august time period where we started like really making some serious cuts because we were trying to avoid that outcome even long before then but during that time was when we had to make some serious cuts which meant letting some team members go yeah it meant cutting some contractors and i remember there was one day where we had we had to let three people go on a team and and these are these are people that i've come to love and and and value and appreciate and friends have a relationship with yeah and so lining up those three conversations one after the other after the other it was like that day was so hard so hard but i learned so much about difficult conversations here's what i learned i learned that when you can approach it with honesty with integrity and with um showing up and and not trying to hide the emotion i think this is a like a lot of times when we go to have a difficult conversation it's easy for us and my initial instinct went to kind of like try to rise above it and like kind of cut off the emotional connection and just be like super cold and stoic and like this is what needs to be done i'm so sorry thank you for sure thank you for your work here right like here's sign the papers okay great and and there's something that really lacks the humanity in that and i found um that that was even more difficult and so the way that i chose to approach it and my cousin and co-founder rob we chose to approach this was like was to be real with them and so that looked like sitting down and being like billy this sucks yeah i'm i'm i'm torn up about this because i i feel i feel guilty that we've we've let it get to this point i feel i feel so so sad and and ashamed for being even even getting to this point where you have to have this conversation and like this really really sucks but we have a a duty to fiduciary responsibility and duty to the business that we have to we have to do what's best for the business right and so i think that's a really good point and i think right now and what the business calls for right now is that we need to eliminate certain redundant roles and and your role is one of those roles that's being cut yeah and so i learned a lot about that conversation which is also it's not personal it's about the role that you're filling right now has been eliminated from the company and and but but but to be able to show up as a human and to share those emotions of like this sucks and i know this sucks for you i can only imagine how you're feeling right now feeling like this is probably coming out of the blue or where this is coming from we're here i'm happy to answer any questions that you have around it like we're here with you yeah and you taking that approach of honesty and vulnerability i would say um allowed and we took that across the board to every difficult conversation we had to have with customers with partners with influencers with investors was that like this is where this is where we're at fully transparent and like this is this is a situation this is what led to it this is this is where we're at this is what we're doing yeah and i will tell you nine times out of ten bringing that approach this is what led to it this is what led to it this is what led to it this is the outcome went best case scenario yeah now most of those most of those outcomes were not great outcomes yeah and best case scenario was still a pretty shitty situation but it went as good as it could have like we walked off those calls one of the other tough calls we had to do was with our secured creditor who we we had debt that we owed yeah and and now that's something they could probably come after us personally for as well and so we're looking at potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars that we're going to saddle debt and so we had to call those secured creditors to figure out a way yeah yeah and and so those were high stake conversations and yeah and again we walked out of nine out of ten of those conversations and there were dozens we had nine out of ten ninety percent we looked at each other and said well given the situation that went about as good as it could have which is fantastic yeah and there was one time out of ten where it didn't where we caught the emotion of the other person where it went just abysmal and miserable and it went horribly yeah and that sucked and we had to take that on the chin and we're like that was brutal yeah but i'll take 90 every day of the week yeah what a beautiful story and i want to bring this back in a moment to what i mean you and i have intertwining relationships you know my partner it was your first hire and the reason that that was such a big question for me for you about difficult conversations is because my experience of the team culture that you'd built was it was a profound powerful yeah experience that even cat talks about missing often you know so i want to come back to sure that but i want to touch on first have you read the book never split the difference yeah one of the most profound books on enrollment it's like it's for me it's like the godfather of enrollment yeah that's true and one of the tactics he talks about in the book is labeling so basically going into a conversation and saying listen you're probably gonna think i'm a fraud you're probably gonna think i fucked up you're probably gonna hate me after i say this and you just immediately diffuse everything which now affords you the space to be able to communicate what's actually true exactly i just think that's so powerful yeah well said we were doing that probably subconsciously but that's exactly what we were doing the powerful take me back to the culture you built and how you built that culture in excellence and i mean you guys were doing like fucking team events in the parking lot yeah um yeah walk me through the culture you built and what you learned about building team i would say you're a great person you're a great person you're a great person you're a great person the biggest highlight from all that we did at edge was not the big deals that we got it wasn't going on shark tank it wasn't you know being an official partner with the la rams or the la clippers or you know meeting with dana white and ufc and helping them with all those things or closing fundraising round or doing millions in sales it was it was the team that we built that was the biggest highlight for me and is the thing that i'm still so so thrilled with and i'm still so thrilled with how we were able to do that and to answer your question how do we build this team i think at our peak we had 18 or 19 employees team members and um it was something special from the beginning yeah there was something special brewing and i think that part of it was that we really cared about what we were doing we weren't just selling a product and nobody on the team just believed we were selling a product we were giving people a tool to change their life yeah and that started with mine and rob's belief in that and how it changed my life and it changed his life and it was from the get-go it was it was this environment of we get to do this and there are people out there that need us and so right away it was it was we were in service of others and it was so powerful and it was cool it was like it was part of it for sure was that like it was the kind of it thing and the health and wellness industry and we were like riding that wave and we were creating that wave and so we were we were the you know we were the the the hot girl at the prom right like everyone wanted to dance with us so there's some there's a natural energy that comes from that right totally but um the the other thing and i think the thing that really anchored this this culture that we did is we chose to do to build an in-person headquarters we chose to build an office and to work out of office and this is still like we launched in the middle of covid i mean i mean we're kind of coming out of covid during as we were building but everyone was still remote and going remote staying yeah yeah it was the common theme it was the common theme and we chose very early on we made the clear as soon as we're able to we're getting an office we're getting an hq to be able to have that energy into one place and to also be able to have the spot where we can have our sauna and cold tub and workout area like we wanted to create i think we were as equally excited as we were to create a uh a brand and a company and a business we were excited to create a team and a culture and and and to redefine how we do business yeah so we looked at it as that as an opportunity to especially Rob who had worked in corporate for a while and he had this experience. of like it doesn't work the way most people do it so like let's do something differently like let's have a sauna and cold tub let's create a misogi fund where we fund each employee every single year we fund some sort of adventure or expedition or continued learning so if they want to go do an iron man we cover the fees for that or they want to climb a mountain we put money towards that or they want to learn a new skill and that we actually require everyone to do that we're at the meeting they're sharing what their misogi is and they're held accountable so they can grow so we're bringing in things like that and i'll know and and this is this is i think you'll appreciate the story i know that we achieved creating a team of great culture when um we we gave people flexibility it's like you can work from home if you want but like come in for the meetings that we have that are important but otherwise you control like we don't want to make it you have to be at your desk at 8 a.m you gotta it's like come and go as you need the way that people would want it to be it's like not your chain to your desk go do what you need to do as i know that we we did this when um one day cat was supposed to to work from home because she had like a a dentist appointment later in the day or something like that and so she was working from home and we we expected her to work from home she told us she was and like at 10 a.m she comes in bumping her music as she always did like in a broadside like almost screeching into the parking spot and comes over like cat what are you doing she's like i had fomo working from home i wanted to be in the office with you guys and at that moment i was like all right we're building something special yeah it's really powerful it is the other couple elements that are that are top of mind for what allowed us to do that was um we had very clear mission vision and values and what we were here to do i feel that i want to ask on that yeah please i mean i'm really inspired by the way that you initially went into you said we don't we weren't selling a product we were selling a tool that could change people's lives was that in laced into the ethos throughout the company it was yeah it really was and everything that we and everything that we did it was and we made it a point to be so it you know part of our mission statement was that at edge theory labs we believe greatness happens at the edge of your comfort zone and we're on a mission to give you the tools that give you the edge the edge on your recovery on your performance on winning the day and whatever edge you're pushing towards you got this and we got you yeah and and we really felt coach that was like there to be like, yeah, go get it. And that, that manifested in doing things like a winter retreat in Jackson hole, Wyoming with our edge community and doing sunrise social club, which cat was a big part of building where we had hundreds of people now showing up for breathwork, cold immersion and, and being in this energy. And, and so I think part of the special thing is that we, we had a team that lived it. Like everybody on our team, like walked the walk from, I mean, everybody down to our service techs and, and, and our, you know, our warehouse manager, like everyone was on this wavelength and walked the walk and that made it really alive and potent and important. It speaks to, I haven't read the full book, but at least from what I've heard, and I've read glimpses of it, let my people go surfing. Yeah. Found a Patagonia and how, I mean, the premise from my understanding is that like, no matter what time it was in the day, if the surf was good, the employees have permission to go surf and the culture that that created. And excellence was powerful. And it's still to this day, Patagonia is known as one of the best companies to work for. And it sounds like at least in my experience and obviously being closely connected and not so far removed because of my partner, that that's the type of culture that you were building. Absolutely. And it took a lot of inspiration from, from that story specifically too. And the other, the other thing I think it's important to share on this. And I always tell this, any team that I do some, you know, workshops with or consulting with or founders is that something else that we did that I think was different than a lot of people do it, which you would think, maybe that we didn't do it this way, but it's, it's really easy, especially on teams like this of like, we're a family, like everyone on this team is a family and we love each other and we get along. Yes, that's great. But we said this and every, every single quarter, when we did our team development day, we went over these, these kind of our commitments to our employees and our expectations of them and then their commitments to us. So we went through all of this. And one of the things that I always hit on is that we are a team first and a family second, we are a family because we are a team and everybody that plays sports understands this concept, right? It's like, we're not a family, we're a team because in a family, it's, it's, it's a, it's literally, you're born into it and it's a God-given right to be there. But in a team, it is a privilege to be here. Not a right. You're not, you're not owed your spot. You earn it and you earn it every single day and you, and you earn it by staying there. And through that, we, we develop bonds that make us a family. That's so powerful. Can we? Yeah. Let's dive into that. Family is a God-given right. Whereas a team is something you earn. Right. Anybody that plays sports knows it's like, one of the coach says that on day one, it's like you earn your spot to be here. Nobody's guaranteed a spot. And, and so I always share that with people. And I said this for myself, as I said, think about this, like where we work, what we get to do every day, the team environment that we have, like there are literally like millions of people that would kill for this opportunity of this job. They want to be on this team. And I think about it for myself. I'm sure people will look. I mean, I was, I was a little bit removed and I was like, can I come in the office and do my client calls like in the office? Like that sounds epic. There was that energy that we had for sure. And, and so, and I said that for myself too, first and foremost, as a reminder, it was like, I mean, for myself, I would say there are literally hundreds of millions, if not over a billion people on this planet, that would kill for the job that I have right now for this opportunity to run this company and to lead this organization, to make the money that I'm making, to like help the people I'm helping. Like, and, and so I think about it that way is like, there's a line of people behind me that want my job. And I share that with the team as well. And I shared that in a way of like, this is not for you. This is not a scare tactic or a way for you to be like in scarcity or fearful of like, if I make one mistake, I'm going to mess up. No, you're here on the team because we believe you're here. And at the same time, remember that, like, and think about like all the people that want your job. And, and that when you, when you say that to the right person, it lights them up. And they're like, let's go. It's also, it seems like an element of gratitude that comes with that. Like dad used to say that to me all the time. And you can take that as you can internalize that as guilt, I think, or you can internalize that as gratitude. And the experience that I always had as an athlete, whenever it got hard and challenging, especially as a pro was like, there are millions of kids that would snap your hand off just to walk in your shoes for a day. That's it, man. So true. It's so true. And so there's that parallel that we built to business. So as you can see through this conversation, I think the answer to your question of how we built such a great culture and team is that we built a team and a culture. And it looked a lot more like a sports team, I think, than a business or a startup. So let's break down the tools of a team then, because this applies to business. When you say you built a team, at least in my experience of building a, a powerful and potent team, it begins with understanding where you're all going together. How did you begin with clarifying that? Yep. Every year we started with our team development day, which was a full day where we got the team together in person. And so anybody that was working remotely or in other parts of the country or world, even like they came in for this and it was a day, maybe two days, but it was like a full deep dive day of, of, of programming together where we did some sort of like breath work, cold immersion experience too, and sauna and fun, or like some sort of games or went to the, you know, to the ax drawing play. Like we did, we did fun things like that too. But, but for the, for the, for most of the day we did we did like meetings and we shared, we got all aligned and we shared, and this started from the executive level. So from our director of marketing or director of ops and my co-founder myself, and we, every business unit, we got very clear leading up to that. And this was always an early January. We got very clear leading up to that, like, where are we going this year? Right? Like what's our goals? Where are our focal points? What are our five key objectives? What's marketing's key focus? What are the big projects we have coming up? And we got really clear on all of that for ourselves. Yeah. And then we were able to communicate that with others. And we also, we led with. And every team member was communicating the same thing. Every team member was, was, was receiving this. So they were learning, like everybody from our service tech down, like upward, like was learning, okay, this is what we're doing and why. So now they know why. So when someone from the outside was to ask, they could ask any team member what you do and every team member would know. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And what our goal was like for, for the year, like one of our years, it was, it was, um, it was a thousand, it was, it was selling a thousand edge of it was, it was changing a thousand lives by, by, by shipping a thousand tubs. And then that would have led to certain revenue goals. So that was our focal point. So everyone knew it was like a thousand tubs and we had our tracker, how we're doing. And then when we passed a thousand tubs with like several months, it was a huge celebration. It was amazing. And we had 2000 tubs. We were like, this is the craziest thing ever. So, um, everyone was on that same wavelength and page. And so we started with very clear objectives and very clear goals and, and, um, I think that's really important too, because when you know where you're going and why, then it makes a lot more sense when, when, when you get asked to step up or do something, because you have context for why, why is this important? Absolutely. Can you find Nike's, uh, what was it called? Did you see the movie? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're 10. Yeah. So powerful. I want to read them. Yeah. Nike's 10. They were called principles. Yeah. Differentiators. It's like what we stand for kind of thing. If you go on, if you look up Nike's principles, or you can also look at the movie air that they did about Michael Jordan. I want to read them. They're so powerful because I want to go into this as the next. So you now all have a clear goal, right? You know, where you're going together. The next thing, at least that I would envision that, creates this team unison is code code of conduct or standards for excellence how did you define those yeah we had we had them clearly defined not as sexy as the nike ones we're all trying to do them exactly one it's a bit more corporate than the nike ones but but we had them we had them in the sense of um in in our in our in our um our philosophy our edge team philosophy is what we called it and so it was like you know a couple written paragraphs and then you know a bullet point kind of thing of um our expectations and commitments your expectations and commitments yeah and do you have examples of those yeah yeah yeah um i would say our expectations and commitments one of them was like um you know if you ask any employee would they rather have more trust or less trust like everyone wants more trust no one would say less trust and so it's like we place an inherent amount of trust in you and we like will trust you far and away more than like we will always trust you and we will always trust you and we will always trust you first and foremost and that's something that you earn until you give us a reason not to trust you essentially yeah so it's like it's things like that and then another one was always always um act in the best interest of the customer yeah so that that was down to our customer service rep was like if there's ever a hesitation it's like you're always acting the best interest of the customer even if that means it's going to cost us thousands of dollars sometimes so it's like always always customer first best interest of the customer and we won't ever get how did that come into play at the end when i mean i'm privy to plus one of the challenges that edge was having at least for my understanding was that the tub was malfunctioning yeah so how did that come into handy when you that's that that's a lot of money that's going out for the company yeah i mean literally over a million dollars a year was going towards repair and repairing these units replacing units and fixing manufacturing issues from one of our manufacturing partners who um you know was not up to the standard that we needed them to be and um and we did not um we did not take the action that we needed to remedy the situation soon enough or fast enough even though we are in the process of moving away yeah things take time and when you're running a cash strap startup time is kind of the enemy right like and trying to outlast and so we we what it did was it forced us to get very clear on um on our expectations and communications with the customer as well and it forced us to it forced us to innovate in a beautiful way like it forced us to develop this whole kind of return to the customer side of the turn and repair process to make it easy for the customer so that like let's say you've had your tub for you know six months eight months and like there's a water flow issue or there's a sensor in there that needs to be swapped out like we're not telling you like all right drill it open and deal it's like we're sending you a box with a fedex return label and we're saying hey just drop the thing in the box fedex is coming tomorrow to pick it up it's gonna bring it back to us we're gonna refurbish it we're gonna make it we're gonna test it we're gonna make it like new and if we can't make it like new we're gonna replace it with a functional unit and then we're gonna ship it back from your with your tub for a week two weeks which was the the biggest thing because we were selling we're drug dealers we're dopamine dealers we're selling dopamine right like tell me about that what does that mean with dopamine dealers when you're getting in the cold tub you're getting this complete rush and spike of dopamine and we're we're building we're giving someone a tool that is part of their daily ritual and routine which is which is the goal as a company is if you have a product that someone uses every single day it's the most beautiful thing however if it's a highly hardware product that you have to work out bugs and kinks it's it can be a challenge because now if it goes down like it becomes an issue like think about if your macbook goes down like it's an issue and you got to get it you got to get it solved so for people it was a big issue because this is the thing they're relying on they're and they're doing cold immersion every single morning they're getting into their tub and they're loving it and it's changing their life it's helping them it's healing them and then all of a sudden that thing gets taken away they're like what the hell like oh yeah i gotta i gotta have this working and so people were understandably upset yeah i'm gonna say was there a lot of anger at i mean because it was a big investment for yeah to put into absolutely and you know when you get a tub and then it's breaking for sure for sure and and that's why we always and that's why it was costing us a million dollars a year so much it's about empathizing with people and being able to maybe uh like calm the energy in a conversation and yep and diffuse the the the pain you know and it was one of the hardest sometimes we would like send people like here's a gift card to go buy ice during the time so that you can like still do something right or we we would find ways to de-escalate and our customer head of customer service bless him doug he grew a lot and did a tremendous amount but it was tough because think about when you have thousands of customers we're talking about the vast majority of the units are are are working totally fine someone gets it they're still using it to this day it works amazing yeah so when we're talking about there's issues we're talking about like small percentage points like a small percentage of customers that are using it and they're using it of people yeah but even five percent ten percent of five thousand is a lot is as hundreds and so hundreds of people hundreds of calls and so it can be a very emotionally taxing but also provides the opportunity to to work with that and to bring us back to the team the building of the team it sounds like in the app sense of placing that as a standard that we always put the customer and the trust in the customer first that those choices wouldn't have been made if not because you wouldn't have had the filter right makes sense yeah like if you wouldn't have set that up at the beginning this is how we handle our relationship with customers when a customer's tub breaks an employee wouldn't have known let's send them a gift card yeah exactly exactly those behaviors come through as a result of the original codes of conduct that have been set up absolutely and then we get amazing feedback from people about how helpful our customer service rep was or like you know how's the best customer service they've ever experienced and do you have an example of that where a tub maybe malfunctioned the customer was angry and the whole situation flipped and they now are leaving you a positive review as a result of the week yeah i mean one example is that our our head of customer support doug is a great friend and just a tremendous tremendous asset and team member he um he lived up in san clemente and so um we were our offices in carlsbad so he commuted pretty decently and um and one of the customers who was was having some issues and they were using this in a business setting as well and so downtime meant that like they had to it affected their their customers and so those were even more heightened environments right it's like yeah you know i'm now this is something i'm selling a membership to for someone so doug literally and he did this all his own like he offered and he went and like he went and physically dropped off a new unit and brought the other unit back to repair on his way back home and so like these people were they were team edge to the end because and and then through that you know you earn leeway and then there's something else that happens and then they're they're more because because like we're we're doing our best and we care and like we we know this sucks and we're doing everything we can to to remedy this so powerful yeah yeah it's really powerful i've gotten chills just on multiple occasions at the understanding that i mean one it sounded it sounds like it was so fun two i can feel the heart like i can get emotional thinking about the heart behind the company and the manner in which you like he drove to san clemente yeah you know that's just that's just unbelievable yep to create i mean the heart of this podcast and the heart of the mission that i believe i'm here to forward is the conversation around belonging and real deep meaningful human connection in a world that is increasingly divided and i'm i could get emotional and can feel the heart behind those moments in which it would have been easy to make them othered yeah you know like figure it out it's all good or just send it back in and we'll right we'll get it back to you in two weeks you created a bridge and now these are not customers these are it's an extended team totally totally totally totally and and we saw that across the board i mean far and away the the response that we got from the messages from people of how this was changing their life how in some cases it was saving their life when we had a a veteran who served in our in our armed forces who suffered from severe ptsd sent us a message um just saying i had to reach out it was the getting in your tub was the first time i felt a relief from my ptsd and to receive a message like that it's like oh just heart opening right and on top of everything else from like knowing that you're helping some of the best pro athletes in the world to like the everyday person who's losing weight now because of this and who's who's got a 300 you know 300 day ice bath streak and their edge tub and is like part of the family and is you know we're messaging with on instagram cat did a great job cultivating that community there and now we're they're coming to events and retreats i really did feel like someone who had one of these these edge tubs was part of this you know our edge fam and was a legend as we called it i think that's an important part of building this kind of team and culture and philosophy is that we came up with a name for like what do we call our community members right like we don't call them edge tub users right edgers is a little weird sexual innuendo ish so we're like we're not we're not calling them edgers the edges the edges of the edges yeah um keep going edger the edges we've got a cool community called the edges yeah exactly though we considered it for the marketing implications cat shut it down really quick yeah it was good to have cat's uh cat's energy and her yeah if that was just two guys yeah definitely would have been called the edges one of my favorite things is cat was out for a couple weeks i think for um she's either i think she was traveling in new zealand for her one of her iron man's or she was recovered from surgery something like that but yeah she was out for like a week or two and during that time we had like we had come up me rob my co-founder and tj was our director of ops like we had come up with like um like an alternative tub design that we wanted to make like an exclusive tub drop and it was like we thought it was the coolest thing ever it was like it was like this kind of camo like blue camo at the bottom and we were like we were pumped on it we were stoked and we were like so stoked for cat to come back to show her and like and we were like cat check it out she took one look at her she was like no she's like she's like this is awful guys we're not doing this like i'm sorry i love how enthusiastic you are but no and we're like all right you're right like i love her yeah i love her too i love her for that i mean she there's been so many occasions in the past few months i've been cat and i went i've gone into business and um it were similar to you what you just shared i bring an idea that i am hyped about yeah i'm gonna change the world and i'm like all like oh my god she's like we're not doing yeah yeah and she's just straightforward about it she's like it's not like it was like yeah we're not gonna do yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i know and you lead exactly and thankfully i've learned enough to working with her to trust her in that yeah and then if i try to ignore her which i have times i'm just like we're gonna do it anyway it doesn't work doesn't work no no no yeah so those are um the the the coming up with the the name legend yeah which we spelled edge in it like we misspelled it purposely cool which came by accident because it was l-e-d-g-e-n-d yes it was on all your gear yeah exactly yeah be legendary and we created the definition we have like a definition t of like legend someone who is committed to pushing their edge and living at the you know edge of their comfort zone and achieving greatness kind of thing and so it was like be legendary that's so good with edge spelled wrong but the the the cheeky story from that is that when we were sitting around at one of our team development days with the team we use that as a time to kind of brainstorm some of these ideas so we're like all right guys we want to come up with uh with a name for what we call our community like let's all take a couple minutes write down some ideas and then we'll throw them on the whiteboard and see what we get and uh chad you've met chad before right yeah who's just a beam of light and just energy energy and i'm him cat like working with him him and cat together like something like that and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god those meetings was just like next level you didn't need coffee and uh and so we're sitting there and we're all in a circle and like as soon as we finish the time everyone's writing and like everyone's kind of looking around and we're like all right like let's start who's got an idea and chad shoots his hand up and he's like i got it i got it and he's like legend because the word edge is in legend and we wrote it down and we're like doug was like that's not how you spell legend there's no d in legend when you actually spell legend just l-e-g-e-n-d and and he's like oh my bad my bad my name is like oh my bad you're right you're right spelling's not my strong suit so like you misspelled it thinking that that was how it was and then we kept on the board we went around and then we kind of came back and we're like not actually even though it's misspelled that actually might work in our favor because edge isn't it so like what if we own that and we make it ownable and so uh legend became the the one the thing and so anybody that was a legend like it gave us a way to talk to our community hey legends it gave us a way to write to our community it gave us a way to to to create a community which i think right now in talking about building a brand right now that's like that's so essential you know and that's that's really important to be able to do is to build an actual community of people a lot of brands every brand wants to do that a lot of brands talk about doing that few brands are able to actually do that and and that's again one of the things i'm most proud of that we were able to do is really build it and one of the things that that that that i feel sad about that we did not have more time to build that community and to see what what was possible within that yeah um so part of me mourns that still yeah but um it was it was for sure a highlight it sounds like at the core of building a potent community is caring yeah and that laced its way through the external and the internal because of being with the team i think that's so powerful and what also i know we keep we've come back now twice to the movie uh so this must be cosmic breadcrumb because even as you were saying legend and it came out accidentally and the whole movie in air yeah they they're talking about how i mean that's what i'm gathering it came out who who mentioned legend track yeah and it initially was like that doesn't make yeah yeah you come back and now it's something that transforms the way that the brand relates to its customers when nike was signing michael jordan at least in the movie the way they show it is they're designing the shoe and they're like what they had the air souls and they're like what should we call it and the the shoe designer is like um what about air jordan and they look around like yeah nah i don't think uh nah and now air jordan is the the largest selling uh brand solo brand inside of nike that's ever existed wild potent powerful i want to read yeah did you get them i did great one two three six now the whole world yeah the second one's my favorite but i'm going to read all of them number one our business is change number two i love this one as an athlete we're on offense all the time number three perfect results count not a perfect process break the rules fight the law powerful we're all striving to be like nike i know i know um people i think business owners sometimes create these and then just to create them to sound cool they don't even follow them yeah let's just sound cool but these are a standard of excellence at the company itself at least yeah you know they follow yep number four this is as much about battle as about business if i have an interview film night i'm gonna this is my first question tell me about every single one of these yeah five assume nothing make sure people keep their promises push yourselves push others stretch the possible that's what you're talking about like team is earned yeah six live off the land that's cool i love that one just thrown in there like yeah when i first read that i was like yeah that doesn't make sense in any way in the context of you realize what a hippie phil was yeah just so that one in there um in fact let's stop there if you were to throw in something that's your that aligns with your personal value system that you were to throw in to the principles of an organization what would you throw in i would throw in probably on brand from our conversation but something around experimenting like um especially in entrepreneurship and startup and you know this it's just like the only way that you lose is by stopping and so it would be something around like every every setback is an opportunity for a new experiment yeah kind of thing yeah like and we did this all the time at edge too where it's like all right we need to find a way to get more sales like this this channel's not working anymore let's try this and we we we tested some crazy strategies most of them did not work but they led us to ones that did work yeah and and so you it's just really important to be in that mindset of like test test test test test iterate as fast as possible test test test test test yeah that's beautiful i want to ask you about how you intertwine because i mean not to put something in there for you but but the title of your book cosmic breadcrumbs and what i'm hearing from you and also seeing some of the things you've shared online and i want to ask you about your relationship between uh the jewish religion and also just your relationship with spirituality as a whole totally what i'm learning from this is in many ways business is a spiritual game yes yes yes and i would i would probably take that a step i would probably add something in there that um business is the greatest um mirror and self-development course you can enroll in and that's probably what i would put because if everybody in my team could understand and it was part of the philosophy that like this is a mirror and this is a personal development course it makes it an inner game which is the truth right and it makes it a spiritual practice and i totally agree that would be that would be number one for me because because when you view it that way it's like okay the customer calls you and chews you out which would happen yep okay cool how are we growing from this like how did you respond how did you feel about this what is that teaching you about yourself okay cool we didn't hit our sales targets this month what does that what button does that push for you how do we how do we work through that yeah how is that pushing deep down on your self-worth issues and your fear like i was working on this all the time totally constantly yeah so confident i think yeah business and intimate relationships are like yeah greatest greatest forms of growth possible it's like i heard someone say once if you want to speed up your growth get in an intimate relationship it will test everything you've ever feared um yep and i think you could sub that with with business business totally big time big time and i seem to want to just do both at the same time all the time like let's fucking fuel the growth you know it's like um all right let's keep going and then i want to pull it back there's a question i want to ask that i'm going to present here so i don't forget it okay how you weave your relationship to spirit into a business culture when everybody may not see the world the same way as you yep great i want to understand cool um number seven your job isn't done until the job is done potent go up to santa clemente and fix the tub so good uh eight dangers bureaucracy personal ambition energy takers versus energy givers sounds like chad and cat yep energy givers knowing our weaknesses that's an interesting one if you were to put that one in the context of edge what does that mean knowing our weaknesses yeah knowing our weaknesses um i think knowing your weaknesses is really important because it also reveals where your strengths are and so we knew our we had certain weaknesses around things like we didn't issues with our manufacturer that we were working through. And those were weaknesses we were aware of, which then forced us and allowed us to view where our strengths were. Wow. And we had strengths that, yeah, we didn't have the biggest parking budget, but we could be lean and nimble. we could move quickly totally and um yeah we had some issues with our with our manufacturer working through but now we can create a strength and like building the best of class customer service because we have to wow right so i would say knowing your weaknesses it is important because it allows you to lean into your strengths and yeah not try to play somebody else's game because like if we tried to do what you know one of our big competitors was doing who's a much bigger company than us then like we would have failed reminds me of the quote that the cure for the pain is in the pain it's like yeah so good inside of the weaknesses that's it man so powerful um don't get too many things on the platter i could learn that yeah the one thing it's a great book nine it won't be pretty yeah i think you can resonate with oh yeah yeah this uh i mean working in a startup let alone starting one is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach yeah yeah it is messy it is it is it is challenging and rewarding in that too but it is it ain't pretty it ain't pretty a lot of the time yeah yeah and so many of the rewards i'm sure were as a result of how much you had to stomach that's right yeah it's beautiful and the final one if we do the right things we'll make money damn near automatic that's good that's good and that leads me to believe like the process if we do the right things if we focus on doing what's right and in multiple senses and what's right for the customers for our world for what's objectively right and also if we do what's right if we if we do our job properly and if we follow what we're here to do then the rest will follow so good yeah right phil knight if you're listening love the setup shout out phil knight yeah we'll get him on we'll get him on yeah yeah um i'm gonna ask you this question first and then we're gonna go i'd like to enter the spirituality side of it um you can only answer yes or no okay i just want your gut answer and then and then beyond the gut answer you can elaborate ready let's do it would you like to answer yes or no okay i just want your gut answer and then and you ever go into a product-based business again yes i would not rule that out it's i've got a long career ahead of me okay and learning what i learned about a product-based business for sure i would be a very different product i learned a lot about the type of product and the type of business model um selling a one-time hardware purchase high ticket hardware purchase was great in some ways but difficult in other ways like every business model it's like i i feel like i now through that i i assess and look at business models very differently and look at the pros and cons of them and there were some pros to the business model that we had which was we're selling a you know high ticket product so like when someone bought a five thousand dollars let's say our profit margin is 50 on that like we get twenty five hundred dollars profit like right up front which is nuts to think about but the challenge is that that's a one-time purchase like yeah sure maybe we a couple years from now there's like a deep innovation where someone wants to upgrade but like that person's now done and we just need to be able to do that and i think that's a really good way to spend a lot of money many clients we need so many clients and every month we need to go find those new clients and so one of the things i love around product like i would if i'm doing a product business again it would be something subscription based so you have that recurring revenue or something that's repeat purchase yeah so because like we worked so hard to create this community of people yeah that were that were cut that became customers and it took a lot of time and money to acquire someone sometimes sometimes it would take a year plus of these touch points for that high quality product and so it's like oh there's the nut it's done like we got the nut from them that's it yeah and um and so you can you can you can have different products as well like we were working on a sauna and yeah other types of products that we can sell to that customer yeah which we could do but when you can build a customer that's part of a community that is like i'm obsessed with this brand like feels like yeah there's strong brand affiliation associated with yep i think at least from afar looking in one of the companies that it looks like they've done a phenomenal job at this because i own one is woodwork and i've been working with woodwork for like a year and a half i've been working with woodwork and i've been working with woodwork for like a year and a half whoop yeah you know if i was to think about whoop i first got a whoop six years ago and the entry fee is so low yeah you know it's like 30 bucks right but 30 bucks a month over six years i've not paid almost as much as maybe an edge exactly you know yep but i'm paying i'm paying and paying and paying and it's i just think that's such a powerful it is it is and i'm a big fan of whoop as well we were we were working on a research paper with whoop labs with them with uh dr christian holmes who's their uh their their head of um research and um i think she's really cool she's awesome yeah super super badass and we had a couple of our tubs on their rooftop of their whoop hq in boston which is pretty sweet yeah great company epic another question just emerged and then i want to i want to i'm going to go into the spirituality stuff but who how do i want to ask this we're both men yeah if you had to give me three years of business advice in 60 seconds from the perspective of the business itself but also from the perspective of who you had to become inside of that what would you say what a great question i would say there's no substitute for experiencing it all and for going through it that i could i could tell you all the things but the the juice is in sinking your teeth into it yourself and going through it all even if it doesn't lead you to where you thought you wanted it to be and where you you could be um that it's a great breadcrumb um if i could like be a bit more succinct on some strategy side of things if you're if that's what you're for me yeah i would say um know your why your reason for existence live your why build a team of people who also live that why build a customer base of people who are an extension of that team and affiliates ambassadors influencers celebrities of people who are an extension of that team and that why and move faster than you think you need to move move faster than you think you need to move and that's number five number six is um is make sure the business model can last build a business model that's sustainable and that's number five number six is um is make sure the business model can last 7 is cash is king no matter what kind of revenue you have coming in cash is king and any startup especially product-based startup where you get to order product like and manufacture cash is king like maintain cash reserves and cash is king and keep extending your cash runway like all hell and eight would be keep testing until you find that profit product market fit like keep testing keep throwing shit at the wall nine nine would be yeah we gotta get to 10 we're gonna get to 10 here yeah nine would be that it's a mirror for your growth and to use it as a pathway for that inner growth and 10 would be have fun if it's not fun it's not sustainable make it fun there's my 10 on the spot powerful i want to touch on number five what does that mean speed speed yeah move fast um faster than you think you can afford to go yeah why yeah because because when you're starting a business you you need to get to product market fit which is a hard thing to do and you're running on a time like you've got a ticker and it depends what kind of business like the business we were running where we have payroll and employees and and manufacturing like it costs money to operate yeah and yeah we fundraise we raised a million and a half bucks not a ton but and they gave us some runway but but we really just put that right into into op x into operating expenditure but you you're right you're racing against the clock and it's easy to from our experience we kind of got a false sense of of stability and confidence where like in the first you know let's say year and a half two years it was the sun was shining and we were making hay and we were we were selling and cap told me you saw the tub on like the first day you launched did someone buy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah a couple you launched the tub yeah you didn't even have a barely even had a brand totally so fun yeah and and so we knew right off the bat like oh this is a product that that has a fit in the marketplace which is great but we got a little bit complacent i would say that because because of how unique of a market condition this was this was like during that kind of covid bubble where everyone was spending on stuff especially on their health and like um people had cash and we were one of two three companies that that had a tub that was like this and so it was like we were making sales like it was nobody's business and we were like oh my god we're making sales and we're making a business and it was like this is amazing and we kind of got this false sense of security that like well this is the way it's always going to be and we can kind of project steady growth on this but then the market shifts a little bit um the the market comes saturated and flooded with knockoffs and lookalikes and tons of other options so now we it went from a a seller's market where the sellers had the advantage and we could command full price and people were willing to wait to now it goes to a buyer's market where the buyer has so many different options and it's becoming commoditized where it's like oh my god we're making sales and we're making sales and we're it's like they can do more what they want and now they have the power and that was a shift that we didn't we we knew was going to happen eventually but we didn't see it happening as quickly as it did and so it happened fast and so there was some time there that we i think got a little bit on our heels and and understandably so because we were just trying to keep up with the demand we were out of stock for the first year and a half of business we couldn't keep in stock we were constantly trying to order more and more and more make more to be able to to keep up with the demand so it was challenging to like we were just like trying to keep our head above water with the had and therefore it made it easy for us to like slow down on future innovation or put band-aids on some problems that needed surgery to fix of like maybe you would have solved earlier had you done it in hindsight exactly yeah so we had like we had some there's some downside of like explosive growth out the gates yeah it's it's a it's a beautiful problem to have it i'd love to have that problem again of course i'd rather have that problem than the other problem but but it forced us to like really prioritize and focus what we needed to focus on and and and it it allowed us to it it made us go slower on certain things like like getting to that new manufacturer like innovating a gen 2 product you get all these products out but then the feedback on the product is coming a little it's like a delayed exactly and now you have all these products out and it's like oh yep like here's a great example of some one of the things that we would have to deal with is that you know we we would manufacture in in batches right so we would you know we would manufacture in batches right so we would with our manufacturer we would we would press go on a production order of um let's say 200 units right and so one of the ones we did it was a 200 unit order and they make it ship it we get it to our customers great amazing done and then we find out we start getting some kind of reports and we track each customer to the batch of production because there's there's differences we're making upgrades every production run we do we're improving the product we're making upgrades and and so in one of these we realized that we kept getting these reports back on the um on the the flows the flow rate sensor was like going off and like wasn't working and it was it was um the water pump was like cracking and breaking and we realized that like the manufacturer changed that component without telling us to like a different cheaper shittier version and even our qa tested and catch and so these were failing in the field and all of them were going to fail at some point so now we they're all in their customers responsibility or the manufacturer's responsibility both to the customer it's our responsibility to the customer it's our responsibility to the manufacturer it's their responsibility in the sense that like they're going to give us you know a credit and discount for future orders though they should have given us a lot more and we should have negotiated a lot more um it's it's it's their responsibility but like to you who's buying it from me it's our response totally absolutely and so that was part of the tough part is like we're having to show up and save face for stuff that's like stuff that's not even yours yeah how does that work with because these manufacturers that you were working with were in um in asia yeah so china vietnam work like did contractually yeah so they like that in some ways is like lying for sure oh for sure and there's i won't even go to some of the stories of some of the stuff you would you'd be jaw dropped to be like to hear some of the stuff that they did or they pulled or they um or we tried to that we tried to to shift or to move out of that was like they gave me an example yes another example would be that they um another batch so to close the loop on that one so we have 200 units out there with these these water pumps that are going to fail so like we essentially have to do we know that we're going to have to get our hands on every single one of those 200 at some point to fix that to swap that that part out which is going to incur a ton of expenses for us and so like well we have to now figure out do we do a recall how do we handle this like do we reach out to the customers right and so now we know this is a liability on our books that we're going to have to deal with another example is we did another we did another production run i read about this in my book too and um they um the the the screen that is a touch screen we had like we had a screen that was like a touch screen and like the touch screen sensor yeah wasn't working and they shipped it anyway and we didn't know we we got into the practice of when we received a new batch that would come on the boat we would pull some randomly and test yeah yeah test them before we shipped them out our customers if you learn from that we're like well if we could have caught that it would have saved us a lot yeah so now we started a whole protocol testing here even though we had a team member who was overseas who would go physically to the production line and do the qa checks there's some things that just went and so they shipped us a new you know new batch and the touch screen we pulled we pulled one and the touch screen didn't work so we're like okay hopefully that's a one-off weird thing we pulled another touch screen didn't work again so we messaged them we're like guys what the hell like touch screen's not working and they're like oh yeah but the customer can just connect to it through the app so it's fine and so we found out that they had knowledge of this and what we had to do is we had to go through every single one of those unbox every single one take a heat gun to remove to loosen the adhesive peel back the adhesive replace the touch screen and then we put it back in repackage and these are big heavy machines yeah yeah repackage it to make it look like nothing ever changed and we do that for every single one of those units but thankfully we caught it then and we could fix it ourselves no matter how much time or money or energy that cost so before we shipped it out to our customers so that's an example of the partner we were dealing with is that they didn't even tell us yeah that they knew they had knowledge and they were like oh yeah we had knowledge of this but we the customer could still connect that way so we're even that much more challenging when we're having to deal with an angry customer for an issue that we're like we know and so when i when i this is coming back full circle to when i say move fast is like we in hindsight for sure in hindsight it's always 20 20 we should have moved we should have figured out a way to move away from them like that sooner faster quicker and we were weeks when we shut down we were a week away from launching with a new gen 2 product that was with a new manufacturer who was willing to back it to the point where they're like any if anything during warranty happens we'll replace the whole thing and then we're like okay we're gonna do this we're gonna like they were a real partner and we had contracts in place with them and we had terms in place with them and so it was like we were trying to hold on to get that into play because that would have sold a lot for us but um it was it was it was it was it was a tough partnership but you know on one hand i'm grateful because they got us to where we did too like they got us the experience we had and even though it was it was a large part responsible for our um for the issues that we had the major issues we had in our eventual shutdown like they got us to where we were at and we're not there without them in the first place and so i have gratitude for that and also i'm grateful for so so much learning for how to handle manufacturing partners in the future and um what to make sure you're having your contract how to negotiate certain things better and when you're negotiating with with china it's a whole different ball game it's a whole different ball game um and we went over there a couple times as well for meetings with them and um it's a whole different ball game very different it's totally different like i got a glimpse at that purity through again it keeps going back to nike yeah yeah yeah when he's going over and they've just been egging on deals and doing what they want there's a new guy every time you go and yeah wild west for sure wild west wow did you have to grieve like you were so close yeah how did you reckon how have you reconciled that and how has that been emotionally it was hard it was definitely very hard especially in the in the in the beginning because i you know my worst case scenario came to reality which is that i'm in the back bottom of your mind in the corner you kind of try to leave it tucked away there of like what happens you know all these challenges that happen the reason why they feel stressful is because it's like what happens if this leads to this and this leads to this and then we have to shut down the company and it's all over yeah and that happened and that was playing out right in front of my eyes right right in front in front of us and and also the personal implications of that yeah all the money that i had invested into the business all my whole savings gone in the wind everything yeah everything now i'm out of job and income and i don't have my savings to back me anymore so now i have to move out of my apartment and go live with family and sleep on a mattress on the floor of my brother's room right i'm wanting you so much mate for taking the risk and making that leap yeah yeah thank you bro and through that all though i realized like even though even in my worst case scenario i'm okay i'm okay i can handle hard things and what a blessing that i do have a family i can go back and live with and i do can go to my brother's room and put a mattress on and be like we're kids again like there's so much there there was so much beauty in that process as well of like okay slowing down yeah exactly it was a it was it was a beautiful breadcrumb and um and and i do believe this as well and i was reminded of this is that sometimes god brings us the thing that we fear the most to show us that we had nothing to be afraid of all along sometimes those things that worst case scenario will happen as a reminder that we can get through it it's okay and and i talk about this a lot with a lot of friends as well i had a close friend of mine who lost her dad unfortunately to a to a battle with cancer and and she was like as she went through the grieving process she was like i honestly this is so weird to say but like i feel lighter somehow because my whole life this was the thing i was literally the most petrified of and as he was fighting it it was like it was the worst case scenario and i could never imagine ever having to confront this but then it happened and i had to confront it and i had to move through it and now that it's happened and like i'm still here i feel like almost a sense of relief and like and and and i feel like i'm still here and i feel in freedom in a way that this thing is no longer like holding me captive this fear of this thing happening it's happened and i'm still here and i'm okay and and i and life is still beautiful even though it's never going to be the same and and that really stuck with me and um and and you know and thankfully in the sense like it wasn't a loved one i was losing these are all solvable things and these are all beautiful things because i have this experience now that i can i can i can take moving forward and and i have this investment that i made that i would have paid more for going to an mba and business school and i got to go to a business school and i got to go to a business school and i got way more in return for that right so it's like there's ways of it's all perspective and perception and there's ways of looking at it like that make it the most beautiful thing ever and now right where i'm at right now i'm so happy i'm so thrilled of course there's these times and moments and days like watching team usa win um the hockey the men's hockey against canada um jack hughes who hit the game-winning goal was one of our edge athletes austin matthews was the captain of um of team usa who won he was he was one of our edge athletes and an investor he put money into so like watching those guys win i was stoked for them they were such amazing dudes to work with coolest guys ever and also like you know i'm sure cat felt the same way we were like damn to be able to have the chance to like celebrate that and market that from the business side of like those were our guys like um so there's moments where things like that happen where you're like or there's memories to come back and like oh i missed that that was so special yeah but um that happens for sure it happens you know it happens quite often but but i but i look back at it now as like just with gratitude of like oh we like we really did the thing like we got to do that like oh remember this like wow we got to do that and now where i'm sitting at right now with some of the the founders i'm working with and some of the projects i'm working on and businesses that are in the works like i feel so so great and like i'm i'm honestly now i'm at a point where i'm making more money than i was making before at edge with way less of the stress and way more of all the relationships still intact and all the lessons still intact and now this beautiful book that i get to share amazing that can that it's now impacting other people through that process so it's like it's just more like this was the path of the future just least resistance and i'm still on it and like it's a part of it's a part of who i am that i'm taking with me forward i love that quote so much it's come up a couple times today and like it sounds like it's the underlying thread and foundation that threads the entirety of your life which is i am on the path yes resistance yep and fundamental belief yeah and every single scenario in your life can be looked at with that lens it sounds like it just it's a fundamental shift in in your relationship to reality it is it is even if you don't it's like we might not know why right away the dots don't connect looking forward only backward it might take some time it might take days weeks months years there might be some things that happen to us that we don't even see in the context of this lifetime but i have the big view in mind i have the long game in mind i have the cosmic game in mind with the greater part of us that's that's not in this human form in mind and i know that one day it will make sense yeah it will make sense in context of oh i saw i now see when i can see the full tapestry of all of humanity and human existence and the the the you know the the butterfly effect of how things led to another that like that was the path of least resistance for me and for the greater good of humanity and i can i can be okay with that and so it takes faith it takes not knowing and it takes it takes believing and it takes practice to to practice those thoughts into beliefs but like i wasn't born like this like you know these are the beliefs or thoughts that you get really good at thinking to where they're now automatic and so these are beliefs that that take practice and take refinement but these are beliefs that i hold that that help that help me in every single day with everything who is someone you deeply admired that you had the opportunity to you deeply admired before edge and then you had the opportunity to collaborate with inside of edge yeah uh highlight there probably would be mike posner you know mike posner i love mike yeah i love mike posner i listened to his his album i followed his his walk across america for those listeners don't know mike posner you know his song i took a pill in ibiza you know grammy nominated award-winning artist like just the guy and built this whole life and career um you know building what he thought was successful and then um his dad was diagnosed and died with from brain cancer very very suddenly and kind of shifted his whole way of operating and he decided i want to make music that i want to make i want to live my life and i want to live my life on my terms i don't want to do things that i'm expected to do but i want to do things my way and so he started making all different types of music he started you know he did a walk across america he went and climbed mount everest like just started living life like fully on his terms in a very you know loud way and inspiring way and so i i was just always like inspired by that loved his music and just was following his journey and and um and was like you know one day i want to like i i can't wait to like thank him for the inspiration and like hopefully work yeah one day and yeah i you i'll leave it for the book because there's some great breadcrumbs that led to me showing up at mike posner's house to set him up with a tub and that then started a relationship and a friendship and led to the breadcrumb of his cousin being our lead investor in our fundraising round cutting a check of over half a million dollars and being a board member for us wow that allowed us to kind of take to the next level so it's like the breadcrumbs are just they're they're too they're too perfect and divine and they're just they're just they're too to like to not believe that there is some force guiding us on this path of least resistance but mike was um and can't say enough good things about him walks the walk amazing dude and um and just so so cool and surreal to be able to to work with him in the way that we did and to build that relationship yeah yeah i love mike posner as well i love i'm so inspired by i mean like you said his whole brand has shifted and he's probably sacrificed a lot not i mean he's gained so much more it seems like in sure the spiritual sense but he sacrificed so much money fan base in the process and totally of shifting the direction of of his brand um yeah and deeply inspired by what he's put out in the world let's go into spirituality cool this book's called cosmic breadcrumbs uh someone who doesn't know you and might read the title of this book might assume um would would maybe naturally make the assumption that i mean even using the word cosmic it's like okay this person probably has a relationship with the universe some form of spirituality maybe not as much identifying with the religion itself in my experience of you that's not the case so how does how does your relationship with spirit source universe interact with uh your relationship with judaism yeah it's a great question um to start to just talk about judaism for a moment so judaism is an ethno religion which is different than a lot of religions because we're not really technically a religion we're people we are we are one big family we are we are a descendant we can trace our lineage all the way back and so um because think about it this way like you've you probably met people who are like agnostic jews or even atheist jews or there's the whole boo jews or buddhist jew jews or there's the whole buddhist jews or there's the whole buddhist jews or there's jews who believe in jesus there's jews who are completely secular non-religious at all and it's like but it doesn't really make sense because it's the only religion that that can be the case for like you can't not believe that jesus was your messiah and and still be christian it like that's the fundamental belief or like you can't believe that prophet muhammad right was was the prophet like and still be muslim you could never be like oh yeah like i'm a i'm a you know i'm an atheist muslim you're like wait that doesn't make sense but so judaism is the one um is the one you um ethno religion in that way so it's it really is a is a family tree and a lineage that we trace all the way back to to judea and um and so that these are where you meet like culturally jewish people so so there's that caveat here where like you could be jewish and spiritual or jewish and like the culturally jewish when people say that um i grew up jewish in a jewish home my last name is church so obviously i'm not my dad was not jewish with that last name my mom married him she grew up jewish from morocco she immigrated from morocco so she grew up jewish from morocco so first generation from her side and um um we grew up in this in this home of of our jewish culture and tradition and um i i loved it it was what i knew growing up but then kind of went through the i think natural and important phase to go through when i went to college i was like and i started getting deeper into my spirituality because it was first meditation i got deep into eastern philosophy buddhism the way of the dao and so then let's break this down so just to understand the the timeline of your life and your life and your life and your life and your yes your mother was jewish correct so when you say you got into meditation first what did you go away from judaism and then yeah discover so you grew up as like a normal conservative jewish home we did shabbat dinners on friday we observed the holidays went to synagogue every now and then um did my bar mitzvah my mom my mom kept a kosher home so that was that and then i go to college and um and this is at the same time where i'm starting to kind of like open up onto this path of spirituality as i'm healing my body and i'm starting to kind of like open up onto this path And so I'm like, I'm getting deep into these, you know, Zen, Buddhism and different philosophies. And I'm thinking I'm starting to get into spirituality. I sat with psilocybin magic mushrooms and it like blasted me open. Right. And so I'm like, okay, this was right after my like major surgeries and healing. So I'm like 20, 21 years old. The first time you, you did psilocybin. Yeah. That's kind of early in the context of when it was becoming popular. Totally. Totally. And like, like I was saying in my journey, it was like, I was, I needed to try anything and everything to help heal. You were an early adopter. Early adopter. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and so during that time, I, um, I thought, okay, well, if spirituality is this direction, then Judaism is this old antiquated religion. It's gotta be the opposite direction. So like, I'm leaving that behind and I'm going deeper into this. So when I started like building a relationship with the universe and like, I didn't really use the word God. I was just like more about the universe. Yeah. Kind of cosmic connection that we all have. And, and, um, and then I met a rabbi who, um, I'm still very close with today and he saw that in me. He was also very spiritual and he was just like, he was like, everything you think you know about Judaism is just like the one plus one equals two version. Like the image of God that you have in your mind that you don't believe in. I don't believe in that God either. Like if he's coming from a rabbi, he's coming from a rabbi and he was like, totally. And he was like, if you want me to show you, I can, I can teach you a couple of things. And I was like, absolutely. That's the stories in this book too. And, and so I was like, okay, that's compelling. I'm in, I'm intrigued. So I started doing some learning with him and I started realizing, oh my goodness, like there's so much. much richness here in this in this text not only is there like not only is is the is is this tradition that i've been born into and this this tradition these traditions and wisdom that i have in this in this book in the torah like not only can it be the same direction as this spirituality have but like i can see how it's so intertwined and it can be the foundation for it for me as well and how a lot of and how that and how from our tradition is actually the foundation for a lot of modern day spirituality and some of these other traditions and religions because of how old judaism is and bringing into um into humanity things like the ten commandments like yeah there's a radical doctrine at the time to think that like thou shall not kill and like when half the population died of murder and like if you wanted something like and i if i wanted something that you had i could just like kill you and take it right like that was the way that we operated and and all of a sudden this like this radical text comes out and these jewish people bring this very small population to say like hey guys we got to have rules now and be good people to each other like that was radical at the time that's also why yeah a lot of people don't like the jews which is a different rabbit hole we'll go down later but um so i i got reconnected to the tradition of that and started to see wow there's a lot of value in that through this rabbi through this rabbi doesn't see god this he sees god the same way you do right just he's he's a rabbi so now there's an introduction back into that's right that's right and so and so then i started to be able to like hold multiple things together and true at the same time where it's like beautiful this can be a great source of my wisdom and connection and heritage and lineage and yeah and spirituality and also um and i can also not feel like it's i'm sacrificing my spirituality with it and and then i started shifting and i read about this in the book as well but i i started shifting really going through the edge process i would say i became closer with god and um the word there's many different names for for god and and hebrew but the common word is hashem which means the name and it's like the name of the great mystery it's like you can't even you can't even put a name to it it's just like the name of this this essence of connection and oneness that we are like that's god it's not like god is a he that's sitting there on the throne right it's like that is the old version that i thought was yeah but it's like no hashem the name um and so for me i started building a relationship with hashem or with god and started started calling god god and it built a deeper sense of reverence to me and a more personal relationship and i know this is why a lot of people and my my brothers and sisters of the christian faith um love jesus so much is because it can provide that like like relationship to the divine absolutely yeah from what i've heard i interviewed a guy the other day who would identify as christian but maybe went on a similar path to you but then through that world the world of christianity and the best way that he described god to me is that he used that word it's a relationship yep and that's when i kind of shifted to and it's not in the title of the book the title is building a profitable partnership with the universe and i wrestle with that i'm like should it be with god because towards the end for me enduring edge is really what brought me closer to god in that way is because the universe almost felt too too distant number one and two too limited wow because it's a bold claim because god is the creator of the universe the universe is just one expression like there's something that is that is more that is greater that is beyond the universe when we say the universe there's many universes out there we live in the multiverse like we're talking about our universe that's limited yeah and and it's kind of arrogant of us right right exactly there's only one of them right exactly and so it's like you know there's this there's this force that is that is the universe that is all the universes that is that is that is the combination of all of these things that to me is hashem that is god yeah and so that's number one number two is the the it's hard to have a personal relationship with the universe it's easier to have a personal relationship with god like i think there's something powerful and i see why we're in a relationship with god and i think there's something powerful and i see why we're in a relationship with god and i think there's something powerful and i see why we're in a relationship with god and i think there's something powerful and i see why we're have personified god as a he or him or god's got your back like because because it makes it personal and relatable versus like the universe it's like this kind of abstract thing yeah but it's like no like god like god is active within me god is leading me is guiding me i can pray i can have a conversation with god and and so i shifted and started calling god god or hashem and i and i use the i use the universe sometimes but like that is that is one of the arcs throughout the book is my journey through the universe and i think that's the thing that's the thing that's the thing through in my spirituality and through my relationship with the universe and the evolution to where it is now and it's constantly evolving yeah that's so beautiful i'm really curious about i mean understanding the jewish religion i grew up with a lot of jewish friends but i don't fully understand the religion as deeply as i'd like to yeah if you were to break it down for me in like 101 for dummies yes help me understand absolutely um you probably know more about judaism than you think right like and you probably heard of the judeo-christian values right like that is the foundation of which our western civilization is built on which is built on this foundation of um of goodness of humanity of that like we can be good to one another and we have an obligation to be good to one another and so the the the the whole kind of if i could sum up judy ism and i'm not i'm no rabbi as well either this is from my perspective but it's it's it's the golden rule do unto others as you would have done unto yourself it's this idea that we are the way that we treat people matters so much so that it's like you know in judaism we believe that there's no like there's there's no nobody is precluded from living a quote-unquote jewish life like there's no salvation through belief alone a lot of other relations your salvation or how you will live in the afterlife comes from your belief that's so comes from accepting someone as your lord and savior or accepting certain texts in a certain way judaism is all about action yeah it's all about how you act in the world and and it says it goes so far to say is that we are all judged the same in the afterlife regardless of religion it doesn't matter what your religion is it comes down to how you treat other people and your actions here is what creates heaven or hell for you in the next in in the purification process back to oneness and that is heaven or hell there's no hell or heaven it's it is a purification process back to source into oneness so whereas other religions might just purely in the doctrine create divide it sounds like judaism is dissolving the divide attempting to yeah yeah wow and um and it's it's a very it's a very earthly based religion in the sense of um it gives us um instruction for how to live life on earth that is righteous that is good yeah that is holy in that way and and the whole idea of it is to and we get into some of the cool kind of mystical um components of of judaism kabbalah um is is all around unlocking these sparks of divinity so in judaism we believe it's like everything around us is god right like has these sparks of of divinity of sparks of creation and um and it's all there and like our job is to unlock those sparks of creation and divinity by by bringing godliness to it awareness to it and and so it's it's like so cool our goal is to unlock you know in just the spiritual sense you might say your role is to shift your um um to shift the perspective you have of life so that you can notice what's already available yeah yeah and it sounds like it's not too dissimilar it's the same same exact thing man because when we do that like i how could i ever hurt you when i see the divinity in you and how could i ever harm this plant over here when i see the godliness in that plant right like you you can't you you wouldn't and and so it's very it's very much in the practical like nitty-gritty of how do we live a good life here and that was one of the things that i actually really appreciated too because it's very much in the practical like nitty-gritty of how do we live a good life here very much rooted in how to be of service of others and um and i i loved a lot of the spirituality of like and i thought like oh it'd be so nice to just like go sit on a mountaintop and meditate and like and and find enlightenment right that way and judaism specifically judaism specifically talks about like that's important but our role here in this physical world is is how do we bring that back down to our daily life how do you live a better life to be a better neighbor a partner husband father like friend what is the what is the playbook for that and that's what the torah is that is what our our sacred text is it's the instructions for that yeah i love that statement there is no salvation through belief alone yeah for sure and that makes sense to me i i i like practically i i appreciate that and that makes sense to me it's like i don't i actually don't give a shit what you believe i care about how do you act how do you treat the waiter at the show up when you're when you're when you're when you're upset or you're triggered or the person cuts you off how do you respond to something i don't care what you do yeah i care how do you act that's so beautiful yeah there's a little tidbit yeah that's so beautiful man and i'm really grateful for you sharing your heart in that way and also it sounds like that the this has been a beautiful journey home for you yeah full circle it has a circle path home it has been absolutely yeah thank you thanks for asking yeah i want to end with this understanding of how you because you are both an entrepreneur and also you're bridging the worlds between spirituality and business yes how do you intertwine those two worlds into a company that has employees and has people part that uh supporting in the forwarding of this movement mission that may not see the world the same way as you i think naturally attracted people that did see the world the same way as us but but not but not everybody and um and you didn't have to yes um and i would say just by embodying what feels what felt authentic to me and when i embodied what felt authentic to me as a leader and and and how it was for me then that was fine because it didn't matter it can matter to them they can align with that they can believe with that they can not doesn't matter but you know we had an obligation to creating a business that could make payroll and to pay people and to do those things so there's a very like practical earthly principle of that like we couldn't just be like sitting there like okay here comes the money believe it your paycheck your paycheck's not here this month but but believe that it is like believe that it is and it's there as long as you feel that it's there that's all that matters right can't say that of course so so we were practical and then i i think also um the partnership with my cousin rob was so beneficial and it worked so well in that because he's very much more of the practical of the earthly yeah and um he's more spiritual than he lets on or wants people to believe he's a he's closet he's a closet it's totally and yeah yeah yeah on search for all the closets spiritually curious right like you dabble yeah and so for me living out of the closet spiritually like i i could give other people permission in that way and also you have to balance both and i would say that's part of part of what i feel like my design and makeup is and one of the things that leads me to being um this being the right sport for me of entrepreneurship and building businesses is that i i i can't i do have a way of balancing both because both are necessary it's like they're two wings of a plane you can't you can't fly without with just one or the other you can't fly with just spirituality or you can't fly with just business right to fly in the way at least i want to fly and go the places i want to go is like you need a sense of both and so to me it doesn't really matter what if other people don't see it the same way i do like i'm going to attract the people that see it enough the way i do and for those that don't that's fine they're going to be bringing and they're going to be on the team because they're bringing something so much of value and energy that is that fits and that resonates and makes sense and it works that's so beautiful and how do you want or hope people remember you you know i was i saw this this instagram really other day of like this guy being you know like in in 100 years from now like yourself and everyone you love like it's going to be dead right you're going to be talked about like your name's going to be remembered and like you'll have photos of yourself around in 100 years after that in 200 years from now like you'll be mentioned a couple times in your lifetime right in 300 years from now like you're you're gone you won't be like nobody remembers what you look like what your name is and that might change based on the way we have technology advancing hopefully i don't know yeah um i think there's certain things you can do like leaving a a paper trail like a podcast or like a book yeah it's one of my one of my favorite things about writing this book is like anybody who's related to me and hopefully there's many generations after me like they can go learn about their great great grandpa yeah in this chapter and they can have his guidance and his story being alive so who knows where we're going because i'm sure that there'll be a point where we can just like implant our consciousness into an ai model and now we're going to be able to do that and i'm sure like it's connected to a humanoid robot and now we're alive still and we're there right hope it doesn't get to that point but like i think there'll be ways of of staying alive even long post-mortem which will be interesting to see what happens but i i frame that i think that's kind of important framing in this in this question of how do i want to be remembered and um i i want to be remembered as someone who left it better than i found it this world this my community my family i want to be remembered as someone who who lived life fully one of my favorite quotes i think it's a hunter thompson quote is something like you know life shouldn't be about the goal of arriving to your coffin in a in a well-preserved manner like i i hope i arrive late slightly drunk totally worn out used up saying whoa what a ride and and and and that's how i want to be remembered of like uh as someone who who who sucked the um and that's how i want to that's that's how i want to live yeah right yeah um but i want to i want to i want to be remembered as someone who left it better than i found it so beautiful yeah matthew keep asking my phone it's my experience of you mate that as i was doing my research for this podcast um you're the embodiment of that and the way that i see that you relate to life is to the energy of just not wanting to miss it and i took a screenshot of a caption that you wrote and i want to read it thank you please it struck me like lightning an electrical activation a jolt of awareness in a single moment in the quiet of nature a few years ago a wave of bliss crashed over me i was struck by all for how incomprehensibly and magnificently miraculous our world is overflowing with such radical beauty and splendor in that instant i remembered i remembered how deeply interconnected we are to the whole i remembered how powerfully we really are and how we have the ability to create the life we choose for the longest time i had a fear of losing touch with this sense of wonder and empowerment i had a fear that i was just a young naive kid who would sober up from this high as soon as the real world smacked me around forcing me to adopt the default automatic existence i feared that this feeling would fade away and i would not be able to fade to a fuzzy memory of a distant dream but the older i get and the more challenges that life presents the more wonder and beauty i seem to find every single day this feeling grows stronger and i find more and more people connecting to this power and choosing to live rather than merely exist shout out to all of you out there holding on to that feeling and keeping that dream alive oh yeah i got chills that was in 2018 yeah and now 2026 how do you feel oh that was beautiful to hear that i haven't you went deep my guy i um yeah i i remember exactly where i was during that and it was a meditation on a on a rock out in um sequoia national park just like in in that nature in that connection and um that's really beautiful it was beautiful writing i'm it was yeah yeah i like that yeah you go back and write thank you i um i feel so grateful that that feels so much alive for me still even more so now even more so like at that point i mean i'd gone through some of my health challenges but like i hadn't gone through the edge chapter of course and navigated a ton of other challenges that happened and and it really is that i feel i feel i feel really grateful that that i that i i still feel so alive and active and tuned to that and um and it is a part of part of who i am yeah it's so beautiful and i really it got me thinking about what i believe the greatest fear is amongst especially maybe ambitious people and um i started writing down a few things myself and then through a collaboration with all of our good friend and partner nowadays chat gbt there's something that came through and i want to read it to you because i think it i think it maybe encapsulates a lot of this this is called default mode there's a quiet terror that lives beneath me and i'm not going to go into too much detail about it but it's the fear of being judged it's not even the fear of dying it's the fear of missing it missing your life while it's happening and the most dangerous part is that we don't fear it enough to change autopilot living doesn't look dramatic it looks normal you wake up you check your phone you answer messages that don't matter you rush through conversations you won't remember you eat without tasting you nod without listening you laugh without feeling you scroll past sunsets you scroll past grief you scroll past your own intuition you say one day i'll slow down one day someday and somewhere deep down most people know it they feel the dull harm of something missing a whisper that says this isn't it but the whisper is inconvenient so they turn up the noise more content more distraction more goals more after this then i'll they fear missing their life but not enough to put the phone down not enough to sit in silence not enough to ask the terrifying question what if i'm wasting the only thing i actually have the scariest part is not that people will die it's that many will never have fully arrived they will have optimized their routines scaled their companies perfected their physiques managed their image and missed the texture of their own existence missed the way the light hit the wall at 6 42 p.m missed the tremor in their partner's voice missed the miracle of being conscious inside a body on a spinning rock in space missed it autopilot is seductive because it's safe whereas to be awake is overwhelming to actually feel your life requires vulnerability it requires attention it requires grief for the moments already gone it requires confronting how much time you've already spent elsewhere it requires choosing presence over performance and that is terrifying but here's the truth most people avoid you are missing it Right now, every moment you rush through, every time you numb out every time you postpone aliveness for achievement you are missing the only thing you will ever actually own this moment and one day when it's quiet truly quiet you will realize that life was never hiding you were and so the question isn't whether you fear missing it the question is whether you fear it enough to wake up now wow that's beautiful it's my experience have you made that you are the embodiment of someone who has dedicated his world and manipulated the circumstances of his world to be fully alive and present with him and i'm inspired by that thank you brother yeah i appreciate that that's very that's so beautifully written and and that that right there is the thesis of of finding the right way to live find the others of the podcast i have and like one of my mission is to find the others who also live that way who live deeply who are trading a surface level automatic existence for for for deep living and thriving and not missing out because like dude we got such a short stay here man we just get a few few dozen trips around our local star and then that's it and we're out if we're lucky like it's it's a it's it can be so beautiful can be a playground out there for us and it's it's we're both now at that age where it's like you're seeing i'm starting to see like how fast this shit really goes oh my goodness yeah right beating out for sure so thank god man we got another day it's another day to go play and we do let's go let's go josh has been so beautiful for me um for those who've listened to this and they want to get the book cosmic breadcrumbs yep where can they get the book and then where can they find you and and what do you have on the calendar coming up i know you said iceland but just let people in your world a little bit absolutely so cosmic breadcrumbs is is live on amazon you can get the paperback the hardcover and also you can listen to the audiobook on audible that i recorded as well so it's my voice um audiobooks a lot of fun so yeah he listens to audiobooks it's good and i'll get chad in there chad did record chad um wrote the foreword and he recorded the foreword for uh for the audiobook so you get his voice he's in there so that's that's the book and then um instagram is the way to kind of get into my world at joshua dean church i'm sure you'll link it in the show notes but um you can catch up with my different adventures and workshops i do from time to time or events i like to bring community together both jewish community and otherwise so got a lot of events coming up for that and um my annual retreat out in iceland which will be passed by the time this this airs but there'll be the next one and um and other things coming up so instagram for sure beautiful man i'm so grateful for you thank you this was uh really a a wonderful and enjoyable conversation you ask fantastic questions um your definitely made to do this podcast so i'm excited to listen to the other ones that you recorded earlier and once they get published and and share the love this was a fantastic experience and thank you thank you bro you you