Jose Muñoz – Co-Founder of Wondermed | Healing Mental Health With Psychedelics

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About The Guest

Talking Points

• 00:00 — Intro
• 02:35 — What is Jose Aycart’s origin story?
• 07:20 — The market’s reaction to when Jose started building his company
• 13:00 — What are psychedelics, why are they trending & what is their history?
• 16:37 — Ryan Magnuson’s role in psychedelics
• 17:39 — How can someone’s life be changed and influenced by psychedelics?
• 19:23 — The difference between psychedelics and meditation
• 24:30 — How do psychedelics work and are positive outcomes guaranteed?
• 29:41 — Does this ketamine improve neuroplasticity and can it be fast-tracked?
• 34:33 — What is the protocol someone will go through once they start using ketamine?
• 36:23 — Is a person lucid when he’s under the influence of ketamine?
• 38:22 — Results of using ketamine
• 41:17 — Potential negatives and positives of using ketamine
• 43:18 — How do psychedelics affect someone’s decision-making and personal life?
• 46:07 — What is the immediate step someone should take to figure out whether they should look into psychedelics?
• 48:45 — Building a ketamine company and managing everything from the first day onwards
• 53:49 — Finding funds and angel investors for a business in a super niche category
• 59:04 — What are the efficiencies of the products that come to the market?
• 1:01:03 — The responsibility of changing someone’s life
• 1:04:24 — Will other drugs/medicines become legalized to some extent?
• 1:08:36 — “Human evolution vs technological revolution”
• 1:09:54 — What’s next after Wondermed for Jose Munoz?
• 1:11:53 — The meaning of life and how to find purpose in living
• 1:14:27 — Opportunities at Wondermed
• 1:15:35 — How can people connect with Jose Munoz?
• 1:16:20 — What keeps Jose up at night?
• 1:16:45 — What’s the biggest challenge Jose Munoz has overcome in his personal life?
• 1:17:42 — One person who had a major impact on Jose Munoz’s life
• 1:18:20 — Jose Munoz’s book or podcast recommendation
• 1:19:34 — What would Jose Munoz tell his 20-year-old self?
• 1:19:49 — What does success mean to Jose Munoz Aycart?

Show Links

• https://twitter.com/munozaycart/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jose-munoz-aycart/
• https://www.wondermed.com/

Podcast & Newsletter Sponsors

• HUBSPOT – http://hubspot.com/successpod/
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Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

ketamine, started, psychedelic, company, medicine, build, investors, people, understand, industry, experience, positive impact, business, feel, learning, life, idea, world, concept, mental health

SPEAKERS

Scott D Clary, Jose Muñoz

 

00:00

Hey, I have a favor to ask. You might not know this, but this show that you’re listening to is part of the blue wire Podcast Network. It’s basically a network of awesome shows just like this one. My name is Andrew and I run network operation for blue wire. We just launched a survey and we need your help, by going to blue wire pods.com/network survey to complete it. It only takes a few minutes, and it will help us understand who is actually listening to the shows across our network, which will help us sell better and more relevant ads on the shows you listen to. This helps support your favorite podcast host, because it puts money back into their pockets are all the amazing content that they create. I’ve been a podcaster for over eight years, and I can tell you that support from listeners is the number one reason why I continue podcasts. So go help your favorite podcasts are out right now by going to blue wire pods.com/network survey to tell us some info about yourself. And if you do so, you’ll be entered to win a $200 amazon gift card. There’s really no downside for doing this. That’s blue wire pods.com/network survey. If you want to be entered for the chance to win the gift card you can opt in when you complete the survey. Thank you very much.

 

Scott D Clary  01:15

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host Scott D Clary. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot Podcast Network which has other great podcasts like socialite hosted by Steph Taylor socialite discusses all things online marketing Steph Taylor answers all your business marketing questions. She deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing marketing strategy for business owners. If any of these topics resonate with you, you’re gonna love the show, you’ll learn things like how to scale your brand on various different social media platforms, some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch of a new product or service, the importance of nurturing and engaging your audience consistently. The importance of having your audience fully understand the problem you’re trying to solve and why it’s important to solve right now, as well as why growing audiences across all social platforms feels so hard. In 2022. You can go listen to socialite wherever you get your podcast, or at the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcast Network. Today, my guest is Jose Muñoz. He is the co founder and managing director of Wonder met a health tech company empowering the inner healing of people through psychedelic medicines starting with low dose oral ketamine. Jose combined his international experience in business and entrepreneurship to develop business models that generate positive impact. Previously building self sustained desalination plants in underdeveloped countries throughout the world, he has shifted his focus to healing mental health disorders with the help of psychedelic medicine, raising $5.6 million to date, in their seed round, he is determined to push the boundaries of our imagination to make long lasting change in the world. Now we spoke about his company, the structure, the history, the mission, the vision, we spoke about ketamine, how it works in the brain, and the power it holds to gaining new perspectives on treating mental health disorders. We spoke about how people can actually start using it to heal what the process looks like the positive impact that wonderment is trying to bring to the world at large, the boundaries and limits of our understanding as human beings in terms of treatment and mental health and well being. We spoke about the meaning of life, we spoke about how to find purpose and living, we spoke about the potential of psychedelic medicine to revolutionize society at large. No, no, no,

 

Jose Muñoz  03:53

it’s a fair assumption. I think positive impact will be the common denominator. We think everything that I’ve been doing since a very young age. I think I’ve mentioned these before. Probably I was 12. When I started on my birthday is deciding that I wanted to conglomerate value from people. So instead of making a birthday list of things that I wanted, I started making a birthday list of things that people needed. And so I would use the chance that people were just giving me things for the fact that I had just gone one more round around the sun and utilize that and given what a hospital so for example, a lot of the times what I did was soccer balls. One year, I collected 50 soccer balls, and just started spreading them through a hospital network. And so

 

Scott D Clary  04:35

that was that’s amazing. I was there. I don’t want to presents as a kid. Hey, fair. No, no, no, that’s good. So from a young age is what you were doing.

 

Jose Muñoz  04:42

Yeah. Shout out to my mother. Yes, the one that I started inflicting that value that we can make good evening in the small decisions. And I think that just a stick with me. I’ve always been passionate about seeing the world from the big picture and understanding that if anything, we’re just one more factor us As humans in the whole ecosystem of life, and things are clicking, when I was in New York, going on the subway, I was going to school, and realizing that the amount of people that I was crossing by every single day that were making very similar interactions with life that I was that he had something of value that nobody was capturing. So I started getting very, very curious about how to conglomerated human power to generate positive impact. And so what I did was, I started studying socio economic development, I found, like a lot of people know, money becomes the function of movement of development in society. And I wanted to understand where it came from the structure to which it was being produced, used or stored. And I started to study things such as pills lock, the bank chart that started in 1844, in England, and realize that the structure of the financial markets and economies was a set of structure that was being tested a very long time ago, and it has had not that much of a change. And so when I started reading white papers, like the theorem, white paper, or the Bitcoin white paper, and cryptocurrency systems, realize that they were discussing topics that were, for the longest time, considered the only reality of economic systems, we’re talking about basic things such as reserve ratios, in socio economic models, and how much reserves do you need to be able to print additional value. And so that just got me excited of realizing that there could be a new model that we could build, where people could enter all

 

Scott D Clary  06:38

areas of life, not just all areas of life.

 

Jose Muñoz  06:41

And so I started promoting technology, I wanted people to feel passionate about doing good, I looked at the nonprofit industry and realize that there’s something integral that is missing on it. And that is the fact that when you are producing value, you’re giving value, you want to get something in return, it doesn’t necessarily have to be economic value, but something and then don’t nonprofit industry a thing lacks, from a fundamental standpoint, how it is being seen and worked until today lacks that you’ll give money, you don’t see it again. But you really don’t see anything else except that transaction that you did in the past, then when you go into positive impact investing, so an area that I really, really enjoyed, there was a very big opportunity cost constantly being decided between capital gain or positive impact. And I saw that as unrealistic expectation in terms of comparing every single decision making between those two factors. And so I started to develop something quite in the middle, where you could be part of a larger circle, a larger socio economic movement in which your interactions didn’t necessarily mean higher revenue, your expectation wasn’t to generate additional capital. But some will get back to you, in addition to positive impact. And so one of the first things and currently still in the air, a sub desalination plant, to provide water from the ocean to people that don’t have water, in coastal places where scalability of water is very difficult. Wells don’t work well, when you’re talking already in the sizes of 3000 to 5000 families. And so I just like to start sticking things together, I went to the best technology out of Netherlands, elemental water makers put things together. And I started to generalize this idea that if you want to belong to a larger community, that everybody from the world can belong to, in an equal way, and be part of a positive impact movement, you can you can actually generate value from it.

 

Scott D Clary  08:35

What’s the reception to that? So now, I think that positive impact, investing is actually very, very involved. I think that something that people really care about, I think it’s not the growth at all costs. And I actually think that when people look at companies that do good, there’s a lot of underlying factors, and they can make substantial returns as well. And the growth at all costs mindset actually, is starting to really fall out of favor. Not completely, but I mean, to many investors, it’s very important. When, like, timeframe, so when was when were you doing this? Because I want to understand the sentiment, yeah, eventually, but the sentiment towards what you were doing. So when you first were trying to do good, you were looking for investment, or what was the what was the market reaction to what you were building,

 

Jose Muñoz  09:22

I’m wanting to a competition of startups in the Amazon offices in New York, won by a surprisingly large storm, given that I needed to have an MVP product in the digital space already created, and they didn’t have it. They didn’t have that type of technological knowledge to be able to make it happen. But I had a story, I had the idea, I’m very well thought out. And I remember the crowd is standing up and applauding to the concept. And I think that that really just made me realize it’s not going to be easy. Investors are not going to be receptive at first or have an idea like this. But what I just experienced of a reaction from a crowd is exactly what I’m looking for the type of value that I want to be represented in a system that hasn’t been created yet. So I started going for VCs, and sentences like, Hey, I’m more interested in positive impact than making money, you know, something you should say in front of an investor.

 

Scott D Clary  10:13

Now, usually, I mean, it’s not a bad thing to say. But I also know, I know investors. Exactly. It’s a tough one.

 

Jose Muñoz  10:19

So that made me learn pretty quickly, that positive impact is still needed to embrace itself more in the mindset of traditional investments, or VC. And so that just made me realize that a lot of it was going to be coming directly from people, the concept of crowdfunding, the concept of being able to generate one plus one equals three if it comes from multitude. And I was actually in the middle of building this when I got to meet Ryan Magnuson, the co founder of Wonder sciences, and Wonder Man, and he’d really put everything together at the time I was studying astrophysics, I was doing a thesis in trying to understand the boundaries and limitations of the observer. Okay, ourselves as humans in understanding what reality was, what the concept of the universe was. And I started to find very interesting statistics, like, for example, humans can only perceive point 00 35% of the electromagnetic spectrum of light. Again, point 00 35%.

 

Scott D Clary  11:17

What does that mean? Write that down for what that means for the,

 

Jose Muñoz  11:19

let’s see. Let’s put it with from an economic standpoint, I’m gonna give you a million dollars from which

 

Scott D Clary  11:26

you Oh, no, no, I understand the minute ratio that we can see, I actually met but like, if somebody is like, what does that actually mean for what I can see? Well, or what

 

Jose Muñoz  11:35

we see reality, everything around us right now color shapes, it all comes because of the reception that we have, from a visual standpoint of the electromagnetic wavelength that is all around us. That electromagnetic wavelength has a spectrum, let’s consider a spectrum of zero to 100, in which you can only perceive point 00 35%, which is an oily small number, and singly a small. So when we consider the objectable reality, it’s a very limited one, all around us right now, there is an incredible amount of light wavelength that we are not even able to perceive. And so that made me just trigger the idea of why when we look out in the universe, we tried to create mathematical equations to understand what it is, without really first understanding how limited we are in understanding the current reality that we have. And so I started correlating scales of astrophysics and quantum physics and found very similar boundaries in the skills of when our current mathematics and physics models stopped working. And that just made me feel very small, it made me feel very special, it made me realize of the true power, that life is the uncertainty of it. And you know how valuable we are to be here today in the same

 

Scott D Clary  12:45

almost like the naive pneus of humans. Absolutely.

 

Jose Muñoz  12:49

And once again, I got reinforced the idea that the only purpose that we have here is to try to make the best of it. It’s almost as if traditional concepts such as heaven, or the present, and we just have to build it. And this is also where the fight between light and darkness in society comes underneath the framework of psychedelic medicine. It is the idea that, as a society, we need to change fast, and we need to change now, for us to change the direction in which the world is going. I think people are realizing of the true detriment of the impact that society has been having in the way that we’ve been living for now centuries. But now more than ever, we’re actually being able to quantify the detrimental factors, we’re actually being able to understand and visualize this is not just something happening in my small town, or my city or my country, it’s actually happening more wide. And people are starting to suffer from a big picture perspective. And so when he came to me, and he told me that he was trying to elevate the consciousness of the planet, he wanted to start allowing people to change their perspective. And doing so through technology, technology being psychedelic medicine, I think that’s the best way to describe it. Some people might describe it as a product, some people may describe it as a service. I think that the most pragmatic way of looking at it is technology. One plus one equals two for me, and I decided to move to LA from New York, and I started building the company with them.

 

Scott D Clary  14:16

And what so, so that incredible, it’s an incredible reason to want to go into a certain business and a certain, a certain thing that you’re trying to do. So you, I see that progression, you’re you’re trying to really, you’re trying to make life better for people, you realize how people don’t really have a good grasp on what life even is. And this is the mechanism that will hopefully allow you and the team to do this. Now, when you look at when you look at psychedelics, let’s first talk about why because psychedelics are not new. So let’s break down like why are psychedelics trending now? What is the history of psychedelics been? Because I also want to understand that if these are again To play devil’s advocate such a great benefit to society and allow us to see things and and look at life through a different lens and think differently and think bigger. Why have you know why as government more or less shut these down for a significant period of time? And then also, what’s different in 2022?

 

Jose Muñoz  15:20

That’s a great question. And it actually to answer it goes far beyond psychedelic medicine or medicine as a whole. We’re talking about social behavior, the way in which the world behaves, and every single actor in this play, which is us, as individuals, are being able to make a voice or an impact, I think, when secondary medicine, he initially got out into the world, it was a very difficult time for society, especially in the United States through the Nixon years war on drugs was voting power, I think there was a lot of detrimental factors that come with drugs. And unfortunately, psychedelic medicine got introduced into the same bucket, primarily because he was making a large portion of society that was going through these experiences, think differently. I think governments since the inception of time, have wanted us to behave like sheep’s to feel structured and gain that a structure through lack of understanding, lack of transparency of information. And psychedelic medicine does exactly that. Not in the large skate and large scale alone of society, but to yourself. It allows you to think differently, to behave differently to see the reality with a different lens. And governments don’t want that to happen. What has changed now, the age of information, I think truth is much harder to be hidden today, than it was 100 years from now that it was 1000 years from now. And it will be harder to be hidden in the next 100 years. And I don’t know the same way that I turned myself into it. I’m a very data driven person. I think anybody else that wants to understand really the power that psychedelic medicine has, through clinical trials, you can just look at the data. And the results that have been happening, comparing them to anything else that has been utilized for the same purpose is showcasing incredible results. And so there’s really a hard way to look at this and realize, okay, this is something we should stop the other way around. It’s actually turning very intelligent minds the other way and thinking, Okay, this is something we should actually explore further. And I’m talking about neuroscientists, astrophysicist and biologists. business savvy individuals, really, from every aspect of the world of life, are coming into a psychedelic world with an AI of exploration. And I think that that’s something that, you know, in the past, we didn’t have the opportunity to bring in such a large scale.

 

Scott D Clary  17:46

And follow up on that. Why do you think that psychedelics, you made a career choice, he made a conscious career choice? I mean, the Janet, the guy who you named before, gentlemen before Well, Ryan Magnuson, so explain his role. What was he the reason the main founder? Yeah, he’s the one he’s the one who’d been involved in psychedelics for a long period of time, or is this

 

Jose Muñoz  18:05

through his personal life, psychedelics, changed his life. And that’s something that he talks a lot about. That’s why he was passionate about what he was passionate. I mean, I think he’s always been an indie. But he started pioneering the internet in the early 19, early 2000s, and build a very, are large conglomerate that then, in my opinion, shape where the internet is, today, we’re talking about a company that was doing the little advertisement, when websites were created for the first time. And he’s type of mind was always surrounding innovation. And he got to a point in his life, where he started to decide what else is there? What’s the actual purpose? And I think that psychedelic medicine really provides you that type of perspective in a very quick manner. Very rapid way. It’s almost a catalyst of your own perspective.

 

Scott D Clary  18:55

That’s actually a question I was gonna ask. Because if you’re thinking about how do I, how do I make life better, everyone on the on Earth, it’s interesting that you chose psychedelics versus, for example, fixing education systems or something like that. Right? So is a reason because it’s such a an immediate, quick, if you expose somebody to psychedelics, and you feel like their life can be instantly improved. Is that the reason why you wanted to double down on this versus anything else that could elevate the consciousness of humanity?

 

Jose Muñoz  19:24

I actually love the example you gave education. I think psychedelic medicine is the most fascinating form of education for somebody that allows a structural change to happen in one’s mind. I think education starts when you’re a baby, the first neurological connection you make, whether it’s Mom, whether his dad, whether he’s water, because you need it. You start learning and adapting how to behave as a species in this world, based on social constructs, whether it’s language, whether it’s norms, that start building who you are as a character, and for the longest time We are all kind of living in the present moment, if you think of this of life as a book, we’re in the present page, you’re reading it. And sometimes you have the ability to go back and think of memory. So think of ways in which you currently have landed in this present page. Psychedelic medicine allows you to open that book, and be able to navigate a catalogue, a lot of times your life a lot to see the big picture of the book, the beginning the end, and see how you want to continue shaping it. So it’s the most profound form of education that somebody can have, that allows them to really have their own eyes as to what life is

 

Scott D Clary  20:38

and is and what’s so different between psychedelics versus if you like, if you meditate, and if you have focus on extreme self awareness and is there is there is there is there things you can take from it other practices that are could be similar to to what you unlock when you take psychedelics. I’ve actually I’ve never done any psychedelics I mean, yeah, sure, drink smoke, like just like recreational shit, but never like ketamine. I know a lot of people that microdose LSD use is a very popular thing now as well. So like, walk me through what happens when you first take any I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of different types of reactions to different types of substances, completely personal, like if somebody has some Ayahuasca I’ve never done, but I’ve heard a lot of people speak about that crazy shit. So if somebody’s listening to this, and they’ve never touched psychedelics in their life, like what is do like a one on one on what to expect, like, I bet they I bet it’s almost hard to conceptualize how you can think differently than how you think right now. Like, it doesn’t make sense because your life and learn experiences indicate how you think. And yeah, there’s times when you may be, you know, if you if you’re in a great state, and you’re calm, and you’re relaxed, you’re not stressed out, maybe you think a little bit clearer. But for somebody to think differently, or to think in, you know, in 3d versus on a single level, it’s it’s an incredible thought, but it’s hard to comprehend and wrap your mind around.

 

Jose Muñoz  22:05

Absolutely. I mean, I think everybody’s is different as an experience. When I personally think of psychedelic medicine, the idea that comes to my mind the most is the idea of perspective, there is an exercise that I usually do with people, we just do, place a finger in front of their face, and look at something in the opposite side of the room. And then to close one eye, and then close the other one, and feel how the finger doesn’t move, the thing that you’re looking at in the background doesn’t move, you’re only changing the perspective of one over the other. And the whole reality really shifts as its own look, that is small difference is really what you can feel in a psychedelic experience. thing, there’s a lot of physical components to it as well, that it’s what makes it an enjoyable in some cases, and in some cases, a heart experience. But at the end of the day is that second look that you can take from a different angle. So it was a bird’s eye view of your life. In the case of ketamine, for example, a lot of people represented as a step back, the ability of being able to look at your life or to look at what’s currently happening or the problems that you might have. From a observer standpoint, we’re talking before about the limitation of the observer,

 

Scott D Clary  23:17

going out of body experience to an extent,

 

Jose Muñoz  23:21

exactly. common traits of people that do psychedelic medicine is really shifting the concept of me, me, me, too, we we, it really makes you feel that you belong to something greater, that you belong to something that it’s hard to understand. It’s hard to explain. But it’s something that goes beyond what you’ve been taught. For the longest time. That reality is the life is and I think that we just need to be listeners of those experiences, and we need to be observers, and then we need to try to adapt. And that to your point to your question before comes the aspect of not seeing psychedelic medicine as the only route to get here. Psychedelic medicine, in my opinion is a miracle catalyst, people are able to achieve this type of perspective or way of thinking without the necessity of the substances. You mentioned meditation breathwork. Exercise, I personally got to experience these out of body type of experiences or perspectives by analyzing the gravitational movement of the moon around the earth, just by staring at the moon for two hours after studying gravitational theory, be able to disconnect for a second and perceive the world around me in a different way. Others do it by doing extreme sports or taking their bodies to the limit. I think that there’s multiple ways in which you can actually gain this perspective. And the beautiful thing about psychedelics is that not everybody has the willpower or their life allows them to focus so much in so much effort into getting there without any form of help.

 

Scott D Clary  24:51

It’s true. Life is stressful. Very stressful. Noisy. Yeah,

 

Jose Muñoz  24:55

very noisy. I think a lot of people more than we want to talk about our suffering from mental health. from their suffering and quietly, one of the main reasons could be because people are not aware they’re suffering from mental health are one in every four Americans are suffering from a diagnosable mental health disorder in a single given year. More and more now that I’m in the mental health space, I keep hearing people open up to myself one on one conversations around what depression really means and how they’re going through it. And it is truly different for a lot of people. And that’s also the beautiful thing of, of what we do. And what Wonder Man is doing right now, is that we’re providing a medicine, to our solution that seems very common to everybody, anxiety, depression, but there is actually a very unique, everybody feels inside in depression, incredibly differently. And so the changes that you see and that we’re seeing in our patients, is really what fascinates me.

 

Scott D Clary  25:46

So if everybody experiences everything differently than how do you have a solution to help anybody? And then also have everybody experiences anxiety and depression differently? How could How could anything ever be, like federally approved, because I’m sure that, you know, if somebody somebody has, you know, somebody has anxiety, depression, or a lot of demons inside, and they and they go do ayahuasca, and you’ll have somebody who can sort of guide them through that, but there’s so many different outcomes, and obviously, it’s good or bad. And it’s very different for every single person, because the problems are dealing with a very different the traumas we’re dealing with. If you try and tap into those traumas, with, I guess, the traditional way that you would happen to those would be like a therapist or something like that to somebody who has the knowledge to guide you through. If you’re just giving somebody a substance and saying, I’m going to let the substance do the work. But we’re going to have the substance for a wide variety of different traumas. How do you know that the outcome is going to be positive or negative or healthy or unhealthy?

 

Jose Muñoz  26:43

Great question. I think to answer it, we need to look at it from two different standpoints. One is what I mentioned before, that the medicine alone doesn’t do the trick. The medicine allows you the opportunity for that caught me

 

Scott D Clary  26:53

up and just like so what’s the what’s the what’s the therapy like? So let’s say like somebody’s actually looking to, and then we can sort of understand more about how

 

Jose Muñoz  27:01

it works. Let’s focus in on what’s currently being available for people Yeah, has been available for the past 50 years, but it’s currently being accessible through companies like Wunderman. If you’re somebody suffering from mental health, currently, the psychiatry industry utilizes very subjective standardization surveys to understand whether or not somebody’s suffering from a mental health diagnosis and therefore it gets diagnosed for a disorder. Right now, the way in which one there might allow somebody to be able to experience this alternative form of treatment is by them, going to a digital platform where they get diagnosed, they get asked about their health history, they’re able to have a one on one consultation with a clinician that understands and gets to know the reasons why somebody is seeking these type of alternative form of medicine, and then allows them to be able to in the comfort of their home, receive a medication package that gets them into a meditative state. So really one of the main powers of ketamine and in the case of low dose allows you in a safe environment to get into an experience of about an hour an hour and 15 minutes. That in our case, currently, standardization is one time per week that allows you to get this perspective allows you to look inside yourself. And in our case, we call it empower your inner healer, for the longest time, and I think to backtrack a little bit, mental health has been seen as a chemical imbalance issue in the brain. So we started to devise different medications such as SSRIs, or benzodiazepines that started targeting these problems from that angle. SSRI started to regulate serotonin levels in the synaptic cleft, which is the area in between neurons, that regulated mood. And we thought that there was a direct correlation and causality between increases of serotonin level and decreases in depression, that is actually seen to not be true. In the case of benzodiazepines, benzos medications like Xanax that people are familiar with, they target the central neural system in the back of your head, and it inhibits it. So it essentially does inhibit anxiety, but it inhibits the whole body. And that’s why you get this type of feeling of zombie like a state. These medications have been used on a regular basis, sometimes on a daily basis for decades. There’s a lot of people are currently are probably hearing this and they’re currently taking them. It’s not that they’re incredibly detrimental. It’s just that the efficacy rates from which the different clinical trials have been proven to show it’s not that high. And so I feel that the whole industry had this shift of paradigm that didn’t just see mental health as a chemical imbalance in your brain, but it was actually more of a mind body, spirit or relation. It is the aspect that your brain has the capability to make structural changes. And that’s where ketamine comes into play. Ketamine targets the glutamate and neurotransmitter network, which is the most common and potent neurotransmitter network in the brain, and it empowers it. So instead of inhibiting it actually generates new neurological connections. It is this concept of neuroplasticity. The brain is one of the most, if not the most beautiful, complex and interesting muscles that we have in the body. It allows you to change how you see everything the world or you interact with it, your sensitivity levels, your perception of the world. And to think that that has been built through time when you’re a kid, this idea that you can learn a lot. You’re a fast learner, when you’re a kid you adopt a lot kind of gets lost as you grow, I find it to be a very sad reality for a lot of people. And if psychedelic medicine has the opportunity to sprung that back through the idea of increased neuroplasticity, I think people are inherently going to be thinking differently. That is more changed them I allow you to change a thought loop that might be generating anxiety or depression about the problem the finger that we talked about before, and be able to see the actual reality behind the finger very differently.

 

Scott D Clary  30:55

Right. And I want to I want to understand further about how this actual protocol works. Before we go into that for neuroplasticity if you’re saying that this ketamine improves neuroplasticity that is the requirement of learning like a new thing, right? Like neuroplasticity? So, in theory, could this be used to when you’re

 

31:15

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Scott D Clary  32:22

look fast track the learning of a new skill as well. Because whenever you do something one can say so absolutely. Because if you do something, I mean, this is probably like the off label. Use. But I mean, if you think about neuroplasticity if plasticity if you if you do something 10,000 times, that is what you’re increasing for that particular thing?

 

Jose Muñoz  32:41

Absolutely. The skill that we’re working with is happiness here. Yeah, that’s a skill that we’re allowing people to really work on. And happiness is incredibly subjective. It is the idea that you can change habits, skills, ways of behaving, ways of thinking, there’s a lot of people that think in a very negative way. I myself have a lot of people I know that, you know, they get the concept of being inherently pessimistic. Somebody that just looks at the world and if it’s a rainy day, they automatically their whole day is gonna go from that type of pessimistic outlook, that’s all in your mind. Really a powerful tool to start thinking positively and getting your brain to kind of do it without thinking. That’s a habit that psychedelic medicine can help you any form of habit that you want to change. You’re actually in this neuro plastic window state allow you to learn much faster just

 

Scott D Clary  33:30

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Jose Muñoz  35:31

from a human optimization standpoint. Absolutely. I think I mean, our company itself, even from a cap table perspective, people like Aubrey Marcus being one of our main investors, and this concept of utilizing the medicine to become the best version of yourself. Yeah. Hence, looking at things such as mental health is one of the main reasons why we do what we do. Very cool. Learning is repetition, has different components, but repetition is one of the key aspects of it showing psychedelic medicine, I really want to reiterate this, because he’s a very important factor that we strongly believe in the company and the industry as a whole. Psychedelics again, do not do the trick alone. So there is important aspects such as intention setting, actually understanding from a therapeutic standpoint, why am I going to go into a psychedelic experience, why I’m actually taking treatment, instead of taking just a daily pill, pharmaceutical industry has been teaching us for a long time, why I’m actually going to try to take a deep look at myself, and be able to change the way I think. And that intention is actually what allows you to have a much more effective treatment. And then most importantly, to your point is the aspect of integration. It really is the key to prosperity, and long term change. It is the idea that whatever experience you go through whether it’s positive or negative, you need to learn, adapt and generate insights from and that is really the powerful aspect that psychedelic medicines bring is the key to open the door to a successful integration, or to a breakthrough integration effort.

 

Scott D Clary  36:56

So if you Okay, so now you’re in this state for an hour, an hour and a half every single week. So what’s the actual protocol that somebody will go through once once they take ketamine

 

Jose Muñoz  37:05

in our case, we believe that life is very hectic that people need the opportunity to heal in the comfort of their day to day life. And that for us becomes the comfort of your home becomes the idea that we want you to empower yourself to be able to make the change that you need. So in our case, the protocol initiates by doing a thought provoking exercise of intention setting by asking yourself questions and journaling about why is it that you’re going to go into a psychedelic experience, as I mentioned before, the idea of generating breathwork exercises for you to be able to go into this calm state. And then while you’re on the experience, letting your brain discover and explore these these different types of questions that you’ve put out to yourself, I think scientists know this a lot, because it has happened and multiple, let’s just call it this covers have happened. Right before or during asleep, when people go to sleep, thinking of a problem or thinking of an issue, and sometimes wake up with a solution writers, for example, wake up with a sentence that they would like to put in their next lyric. And that itself is the power of the brain of allowing yourself to go into a meditative state or a state in which the frequency in which are different areas of the brain communicate, come up with a certain conclusion. That is really the aspect of the journey itself of one hour and 15 minutes. So deep dive meditation experience, in which you have the ability to explore different concepts that are at a speed and in a way that is quite unique. And then afterwards, you then need to try to dissect these type of insights, things that you’ve been able to see, to think about, and try to apply them to your day to day almost like getting perspective to then cherry pick, what are the different insights that you would like to put forward in your life? And

 

Scott D Clary  38:49

can you end in when you’re in this state? Because it would be hard to understand what this is like unless you’re you’ve actually done it. When you’re in this state. You’re You’re lucid, like you’re aware, like, and you can you can choose what you want to focus on. There’s other things that like because I’ve heard with like Hiawatha, like you don’t actually choose 100% of the time what you’re able to focus on?

 

Jose Muñoz  39:12

Absolutely. In the case of ketamine, and the difference with many other psychedelic substances, is that you do have in a much more direct capacity control over the experience, especially in the low dosages that wonder medicine company is doing in the industry. Really, it’s one of the very few if not the only one a large scale that it’s currently doing lower to medium dose of ketamine, you’re very much aware. You do have and feel some form of the sedated component of ketamine being an anesthetic, how it originated as a substance. But because you’re in our sub anesthetic level of dosing, you actually go into the experience having control over the thoughts. It’s true that we’ve built these the idea of you being able to go into music journey that curates next perience and you very much see how your thoughts and experience navigates based on the music. So it’s not that you necessarily have the pure pure control over every single thought. We’re very much aware.

 

Scott D Clary  40:10

I mean, even even when we’re completely, like when we’re sitting here, you don’t have 100% control over thoughts anyway. So absolutely,

 

Jose Muñoz  40:15

yeah. So it’s a very powerful and unique opportunity for people that have never tried something like this, that have been taking traditional forms of medication. And things haven’t changed the way they thought they would, or things have not progressed and have the feeling of feeling stuck. It really brings them an opportunity to test a psychedelic experience, in this case, coming from ketamine as a substance where they can feel control, they can feel safe, and yet be able to feel something quite unique.

 

Scott D Clary  40:43

Okay, so what is the what is the, like the actual results of using ketamine. So, um, I want to actually go into the business of building a company like this as well, because it’s very interesting that you completely pivoted industries like complete 180, which is like, it’s also like, it’s also like an incredible story, like, as a CEO for you to be able to do that, too. It’s not always easy to go into a brand new industry, you’ve never worked in, raise a whole bunch of money, build a company and build it successfully. And I know it’s still like it’s early ish, but you’ve done quite well. So I want to figure out, like the business of building a ketamine company, but totally, but the results. Okay, so let’s actually like, I want to sort of highlight what this does for people. What are the results that you’ve seen, from people that actually take this ketamine clinics are now all over the US? I think, and that is probably one of the more popular and probably only legal, if I’m not mistaken, core,

 

Jose Muñoz  41:36

in the realization of it for mental health? Yeah, the realization of it on an off label use by clinicians is out of the main substances. Yeah, you can consider from psilocybin LSD. It is. It is very new. It’s an exploding industry is a blue ocean market.

 

Scott D Clary  41:53

How new is this? How new is this?

 

Jose Muñoz  41:57

That’s the really special aspect. Ketamine has been utilized for the past five

 

Scott D Clary  42:02

decades, you mentioned that like 50 years, almost. Yeah.

 

Jose Muñoz  42:05

And so substance that has been utilized in the ER setting as an anesthetic, because he had incredibly safe profiles for utilization on large dosing on anesthetic. And then doctors such as, for example, Dr. John crystal out of Yale University, and started to understand and discover the different anti depressive effects that ketamine has a substance hat. So in terms of it being new as a substance has been available for a long time, but it is starting to be accessible for people in this new off label use. One of the main aspects of this, that has allowed it is technology and telemedicine platforms that have been able to go into states in which a statistical analysis has been done in terms of the resources for mental health that people have. And in some states, you have one therapist for every 4000 people. So it’s a very interesting way of looking at this as an opportunity that never existed before, from how big the demand is, is incredibly large. And I think that as a company is something that I want to reiterate, is this is very novel, a lot of people are cutting into it. But we need to do this in a very responsible way. And I think there’s only a handful of companies that are really taking the hard look at the science and wanting to do this from a research standpoint, in generalization of data, and the true understanding of what this medicine is doing for people.

 

Scott D Clary  43:25

Okay. Like, I’m assuming when there’s financial opportunity, there’s people that may not follow all the rules, and I agree, you know, dot the i’s and cross the T’s you just actually met before we started recording. Now there’s a ketamine taskforce that is going out and looking at some of these companies. What are the what are the potential negatives? Like what could the

 

Jose Muñoz  43:44

abuse, like with any other form of medication, the male use of it, the idea that people may start using it, or clinics or start just dispensing data without the appropriate efforts, and they’re probably reasoning behind it. But you mentioned something about effectiveness, and what have we been seeing? Positive? So let me I’m gonna explain this in two ways. One is the rest of the stickle explanation of what we’ve been seeing so far in data, and two is the actual impact that we’re making in the world. From a statistical standpoint, patients that have gone through one year med and have done one month treatment, 95% of them have showcased an average reduction in their levels of anxiety and depression of 42%. And that is 5% or 95%. Very impressive, very impressive numbers. Now, granted, we launched three months ago, there’s a lot of things that need to happen a lot of more of a larger population. We’ve already been seen hundreds and hundreds of patients but there is a lot more to come. And a lot of more research and data analysis to be done for it to be

 

Scott D Clary  44:44

the measure that

 

Jose Muñoz  44:45

primarily through subjective serving, like the psychiatry industry, as I mentioned before, does things such as the PHQ nine or the JD seven or the SAT 10 surveys that ask you about your well being, but what I really want to hone in is how And this actually changed your life. It’s not a survey that says that you have less anxiety is you changing your life or patients are reducing their anxiety, yes, but they’re moving out of the country. They’re getting married, they’re getting divorced, some people are deciding that they’re going to spend more time with their kids, some people are starting to work out, there are some people that are starting to travel, there are some people learning a new language, there is actual physical and real change happening in people’s lives through decision making, conscious decision making that has come from the treatment. And that is really why I believe that these personalized experiences are personalized impact that we’re having on people actually has a positive effect in mental health.

 

Scott D Clary  45:40

So what you’re saying is the person goes through the treatment, they have a better perspective on their life, they understand maybe that life is short, or that maybe they should take more action, or they should remove somebody toxic or do something that they would have never had the courage to do before. And then they take that action, because of that change. So the change perspective, and the improvement is not for that hour and a half. So once you go through this, how does somebody, it’s because I guess that neuroplastic conversation before, but how does somebody, for example, go through this treatment protocol, and then say, Hey, I’m going to move to Europe? Because or, or I’m going to have a kid with my partner, or I’m going to break up with my partner, because that person isn’t good for me? How does that give them the courage to do that? Is it because of that? Is that development? Where are they?

 

Jose Muñoz  46:33

I’m gonna answer that based on how people have been answering themselves as patients. They feel like themselves again. I think that the best way to describe people

 

Scott D Clary  46:43

that felt lost, people that felt lost for a long period of their life, now feel like themselves feel like

 

Jose Muñoz  46:49

themselves again. And I think that that alone gives you the courage gives you the openness gives you the ability to take action in a way that you maybe didn’t see possible, or maybe you didn’t see the other side, but actually believed that you could make a change like that to actually make you feel better. So making yourself feel again, and I think, you know, when you look at the hardship of society, and you look at what traditional medications cost, people can receive benzodiazepine prescription for 30 $60 per month, and be able to access a form of medicine, that may not be the best, but it’s actually quite accessible for them. Psychedelic medicine and ketamine, it’s in the 1000s of dollars, in most cases, scenarios, even in telemedicine platforms. These are something I’m very proud of. But as a company, Wonder Man, we’ve been able to break that barrier and allow people to be able to receive this medicine for $399 a month, something that we hope to go much, much lower in the future. But there is a lot of hardship. Now we’re going to talk about how a business like this gets built from a business standpoint, business model perspective, capital efficiency, and at the same time positive impact. But people now and this is I don’t know when we’re going to be airing this by the for August 13. We’re going back to 399. Currently, it’s I see distance is $249. And people are having the opportunity of after. That’s it like then it’s like 10 days, guys, we’ve been for three months. But for 399 people are going to have the opportunity to take a hard look at themselves take an opportunity to feel like themselves again, and be able to see whether or not the step up

 

Scott D Clary  48:29

because when you say when you say that you have to be careful because that’s a very attractive, like. So I want to understand if you’re talking to somebody and you’re and you’re and you’re saying hey, you should or you shouldn’t do this. Because you’re saying people that have anxiety and depression. If you’re saying I can see myself as the proper version of myself, maybe I don’t even know if I have any anxiety or depression. Absolutely. And it’s just an attractive thought to think for the first time I’ll feel like who I should be in the past 2030 4050 years, right? So what’s the what’s the immediate step that somebody should take to figure out if this is something that they should even look into?

 

Jose Muñoz  49:05

First, explore, explore aspects of what mental health is,

 

Scott D Clary  49:10

right? A lot of people may not have that self awareness, a lot of people may be absolutely depressed and have no idea.

 

Jose Muñoz  49:15

That’s the clinical effort and really the clinical efficacy that comes from the clinical teams, I myself, I’m not somebody that would go to somebody and say, Hey, go and take ketamine treatment. I kind of put out

 

Scott D Clary  49:24

there what they did they talk to somebody for a talk to somebody

 

Jose Muñoz  49:27

first, there is a diagnosis period. So the flow itself is the following. Somebody goes to the website, somebody sees something in which they feel called to go and explore. They go through a diet eligibility survey to see whether another eligible from a health standpoint, whether it’s an age requirement, whether it’s a health condition or standpoint. Then they go through a diagnosis step where they provide an abundance of information or on the path, the past health history, any form of conditions that they have any form of surgeries they’ve gone through. Then they go into the diagnosis. Step of answering questioners about how they feel, that is all the information that a clinician then takes into account when you go into a one on one consultation with a clinician, and actually go through a clinical setting in which you are being deemed eligible or eligible for these off label use of medicine. So it’s not for everybody, it’s not everybody that feels interested in exploring a psychedelic experience comes to one. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. We’re no no, absolutely not. We are a company that are of all companies, we are currently having a statistically speaking, the higher percentage of people that are not deemed eligible to receive the medicine. But for those that are, they’re having the opportunity to go through and explore this alternative form of medicine. And so it is all clinical driven. We’re actually in a very, as a company, very conscious of the different detrimental effects that this could have if if abuse gets promoted, or if there’s a misuse of the medicine. And that’s why we’re not maximizing growth, we’re not maximizing the speed of a company’s growth over the impact of patients, we’ve actually done very diligent work and gone slow on purpose to be able to make this as best as we can for people.

 

Scott D Clary  51:08

Amazing. Okay, so let’s talk about actual, I want to, I want to take a look at how you build a ketamine ketamine company. Because how did you how did you go into this, even start to think about the commercial structure? How to build it out how to scale it? I mean, if you are blue ocean, then you don’t have a lot of examples to look to. Right. So you’re going on day one, you’re like, Listen, I am entrepreneurial, I have a mind for business I’m going in. But there’s a million different ways to revenue, there’s a million different legal items that I have to, you know, deal with. So what is it day one going to this as the new CEO.

 

Jose Muñoz  51:50

To that point, I think you’ve been calling me a CEO, I appreciate that a lot of co founders will call I’m a co founder and Managing Director Ryan is the co founder and CEO of the company, okay, still fantastic, dude. That’s how we call each other. And they want is a puzzle without the pieces. If you’ve ever built a puzzle, you start going to the boundaries, the edges of the puzzle, and you start kind of creating what the overarching structure is going to be of the building of the of the build. In this case, in the company, we started looking at all the different boundaries, from legal boundaries to business model boundaries of margins, what the legality in each single state was, because he’s very different, what the federal guidelines were. And we started putting the pieces together, it actually took us two years to launch the company that you see today and that people are able to benefit from and a lot of those things were to your point, a lot of thought provoking exercises with experts in the legal field, things that have been happening in the telemedicine space, things that have been happening in the off label prescription space, we learned from past mistakes, and most importantly, from present mistakes, a lot of it was appropriate build infrastructure that took a lot of resources and a lot of time, and wouldn’t have been possible without the team that we were able to assemble the experts that came in and help the company get to where it is today.

 

Scott D Clary  53:07

And how did you raise 5.6 and a seed raise $5.6 million in a seed round? How do you find investors for this?

 

Jose Muñoz  53:15

You know, there’s a very common trade out of a lot of investors that have come into the company, and that is their own self actualization, their own self improvement through the medicine. So a lot of people have come to these because they have been able to have the opportunity to experience it and experience the positive impact of it and realize that they want this to be something that more people can benefit from. We’re also getting a lot of investors interested in early stage industries or markets, I think psychedelic is a market more than an industry. And you know, with that risk with that innovation comes the reward. And I think that some investors that are business savvy, and they’re interested in looking at I mean things from consumer branding perspective to actual technology, the way we see it, as I mentioned before, ketamine or psychedelic substances are a technology that we need to maneuver that we need to master that we need to improve. And at the same time, it is a service because he didn’t experience and it is a product because it is a substance. And so all of these things put together are a very unique type of business model, that when you add on top of that the fact that every single patient interaction is unique and different. You have really even a marketing exceptional opportunity to understand how to talk and provide people with the necessary knowledge for them to

 

Scott D Clary  54:37

do it was it was it hard to raise the money?

 

Jose Muñoz  54:39

It was difficult, but I think that the support that we’ve been seeing from our investors has been

 

Scott D Clary  54:45

and what it is once you get them on board now once you get them aware of how to how long did it take you to find the 5.6 It took

 

Jose Muñoz  54:51

us some time we’ve actually didn’t do any now in a full block. Okay, you wanted to do it in a you know, kind of pragmatic way of understanding how the business went through a building estate Each and they started pivoting to a growth stage. And within the same round investors have been coming in in different points and positive impact. I think that what I started talking at the beginning of how tough it was to go to some investors, the psychedelic Industry and Market has been time after time bringing experts and investors into the space, understanding why we’re doing this, for what reasons, and that made it pretty easy to make people feel that they had the possibility of making a change. And

 

Scott D Clary  55:31

they weren’t the the investors, they didn’t have concerns of regulatory uncertainty,

 

Jose Muñoz  55:34

or they did. vessels that we have in the company are some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met in my life. And the conversations that we had, this is not a happy, happy situation, this is not a super easy type of market, the building in itself from a structural standpoint is incredibly complicated. The contextual risk of on legal and regulatory components is also very risky. But it is a matter of looking at it, understanding what the changes would look like how we will adapt. And if you have a team that is able to adapt to any form of change, you will have a successful company. And I think that investors, as I mentioned before, provided that type of insight just from conversation, those that invested and those that did not invest, the conversations that I’ve had with investors in this company has been quite quite unique.

 

Scott D Clary  56:21

I Yeah. And I always find it fascinating to see where money’s flowing, especially into into blue oceans. Because I mean, now I think, I think with psychedelics, ketamine, I think is starting to become more popular. And I’ve heard it mentioned a little bit, but I’m still curious about what what VCs are putting their money into, and what they concern themselves with, because you know, if it’s not, like a hot item, like, you know, AI, robotics, machine learning, even like, crypto or NF TS for a while, I feel like there’s a lot of it’s a lot of pushback from VCs, unless maybe it does fit their investment thesis. You find funds, by the way, or did you find angels, both

 

Jose Muñoz  57:00

were were built from angel investors and some funds that have come into the space early trying to see what the outlook is going to look like in the long term. And you looked

 

Scott D Clary  57:09

for investors like I’m just so I’m trying to pull out lessons from your experience to maybe somebody else is trying to build in a in a super niche blue ocean category? Did you look for investors that had any previous investment in psychedelic companies? Or were they How did you find the people that you thought would be the right approach? Or did you just approach like 1000 people, and then you eventually,

 

Jose Muñoz  57:30

I mean, it was a little bit of everything. But I think that the the goal that Ryan and I had in in conglomerating, this capital was to build a correct suit of mines. Correct. So being the concept originally in Japan of conglomerating, different factors of an ecosystem to achieve maximum efficiency, whether it is regulatory one, the governmental one, and the private sector getting together to achieve the highest profitability. In in our case, the correct CEO of mines had to deal with different areas. A lot of it was consumer driven, a lot of it was past experience driven, it was investment, a private equity driven, it was positive feedback driven. And so

 

Scott D Clary  58:10

this is your board is now this is where my

 

Jose Muñoz  58:13

board is now holding who the cap table really is. It’s a conglomeration of people in different areas that see these as an opportunity for the long term that is here to stay as a blue ocean.

 

Scott D Clary  58:24

And as co founders, between yourself and Ryan, what are the attributes you bring to the company? How do you balance each other out? And how do you sort of support and benefit each other,

 

Jose Muñoz  58:33

we’re very similar, and at the same time different. Ryan is a visionary. He’s somebody that brings ideas to the table, day in, day out night in night out. And I think that’s something incredibly powerful, it’s feel for a company that needs to adapt a lot. And at the same time, I find myself being in the position to add direction to the changes that happen in the company. And so both of us really have been able to divide and conquer. We’re building a company like this, this is not just us to I think we have a fantastic team in leadership, that has been able to put forward their own experiences, from patient experience, to marketing, to business operations. And together, we’ve been able to accomplish something quite special when I consider family at this point.

 

Scott D Clary  59:16

And what’s the team that you would build out for something like this? Because you obviously can’t look for 1010 10 years ketamine experience,

 

Jose Muñoz  59:22

right? No, no, not at all. Not at all. So you look for psychiatry, you look for the actual clinical side of the industry first. Those are the individuals that bring the notion of knowledge of mental health, they you have the business components of being incredibly innovative from a business model standpoint, I mentioned that people can take our medicine for $399 a month subscription model each month, a month and you go with the prescription. Whether other companies are doing it $1,200 And investors ask how by only taking a deep look at how to build a system like this and look at the granular efficiencies that you can achieve same concepts that we were talking about of cryptosystem EMS is the idea of looking at every single thing that you could adopt a new from a novel way, what I call pushing the boundaries of our imagination, in every single decision making that needs to happen in an industry like this, and to any entrepreneur, I would really, really suggest this be something that you have in the back of your head, push the boundaries of your imagination, there’s always a different way of doing things. In most cases, that different way might not happen. You might mean it might not be the right thing for the moment. But if you have that thought exercise on a constant basis, you will find unique ways of adapting unique ways of finding different avenues to build a business.

 

Scott D Clary  1:00:36

I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode HubSpot. Now, running your own business means uncertainty is everywhere. So wouldn’t it be nice to have a CRM platform that just works a CRM platform that helps you provide a seamless, connected best in class customer experience. For too long, businesses have had to deal with managing point solutions that slow down their teams, frustrate customers and hit them with hidden fees, hub spots, all in one CRM platform has everything you need to do business, no hidden fees included with a connected platform that’s easy to implement and use. Your teams have all the tools and data they need to spend more time on what matters most creating remarkable customer experiences. Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better@hubspot.com? And how will I mean, I’ll go into and I’ll ask you, if you can, you can either talk about it? Or if it’s like trade secret, proprietary, you don’t want to talk about it. Oh, I mean, like when somebody says that, okay, so if their product in the market says a product price point out 1000 or $3,000 per month per customer, and you’d have a way to bring it down and like whittle it down to like 399. And currently, it’s do 14.3 99. What are the efficiencies I mean, the product cost so much, or is it because it’s a new market, and the price point hasn’t really been set yet.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:02:01

I mean, I think that’s a very big component of it. It’s a very new market, this aspect of supply and demand doesn’t even access right now. We’re making it happen. We’re shifting the ability of demand to be able to access this in a very unique way. For the first time. I’m pricing is one of those. For me, it’s been an incredible opportunity as an entrepreneur, to go into a market where even things like price have not been settled yet.

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:23

You made a conscious choice, we made a conscious choice.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:02:27

We’re here for people. And I think that’s top to bottom, bottom to the top. We’re here for people in the way that our protocol works, we’re here for the people in waiting the way that our business model works. I said it before, the only reason why I’m working on this company is for the positive impact that we’re making. I loaned us the only reason why Ryan wants to build a company that he wants to build long term to make long lasting change in the world. And I think that it starts by providing people with power by empowering people. And so in our case, a lot of it was taking a hard look about the margins that we could be gathering today, with the demand that already exists and much higher prices. And understanding that that’s not the type of business that we want to build. It definitely makes it harder, you have less margin on a constant basis on a variable basis and still a fantastic business model. So, you know, a lot of times you just have to ask the industry to take a hard look at itself and see whether or not what they’re doing is what they should be doing. But I think people have the opportunity to choose to

 

Scott D Clary  1:03:25

even look at like Mark Cuban’s new company, right? So everybody’s trying to be more ethical about delivering drugs to people that need them. Yes. So I do believe that that’s the way of the future. I think that everything, you could make an argument that if it’s not a product that improves somebody’s life, like if you’re selling like a casual leisure service, whatever, maybe charge whatever the hell you want. But if it’s something that’s going to improve somebody’s quality of life, like you have a certain responsibility. If it’s I think

 

Jose Muñoz  1:03:53

we all have that responsibility. I think that that’s the ultimate kind of idea that we need to leave here with the psychedelic industry and why it’s so powerful and white, very interesting individuals are going into it is that we as a society, have the responsibility to change the way we were behaving with ourselves with others and the way in which we’re cooperating. There’s things that I’m fascinated by, like the concept of countries, territorial divides. The United States alone, 50 states, incredibly large size. I just came from Los Angeles, if I were to be in Europe, I would have passed six different countries and five different languages are different legislations. And yet we work to be a cooperative system. At least that’s how the United States is perceived. The European Union is perceived as the world as human beings, there is not one single difference worth enough from anybody around the world compared to myself or anybody around the world compared to anybody in this country, for us to not cooperate to become as efficient as we are. I was having a fantastic time. session yesterday with two people were very good friend of mine and somebody random industry that I met. And both conversations led to the same point. The success of a civilization, it is determined by the amount of different species that thrive within the same ecosystem. And that idea can get extrapolated to anything. And in our case, as people, we need to understand what then we’re failing,

 

Scott D Clary  1:05:21

we’re failing miserably right now, miserably. Yes,

 

Jose Muñoz  1:05:23

the fact that there’s 200 to 2000 pieces getting extended on a yearly basis, it’s outrageous, there is what we would call aliens, if they were in different planets disappearing. If you look at a whale, I know we’re pivoting away. But if you look at a whale in person, and really look at it, the fact that that communicates with other species like them, has a consciousness or at least we want to believe that they do, and lives in the same present moment that I as a person lives, just really makes you think twice about the true meaning of life. And we’re missing miserably. Because there’s big problems right now on human movement, the acceptance of people coming from a different place, the aspect and concepts from race to ethnicity, the idea that we’re 99.9999999% similar, and there’s a very small difference, that is a visual difference. But going back to the aspect of vision, if we’re only able to see point 00 35% of the wavelength the spectrum, why would we take our visual differences, as the main reason of change is an incredibly limited way of thinking. And I think that psychedelic medicine or the industry, and positive impact intrapreneurs really are shifting that way of behaving. Where do

 

Scott D Clary  1:06:43

you think the industry is gonna go? Because now we have ketamine. That’s, that’s, it’s going to be set up and gonna help people with their mental health, depression, anxiety. Do you think that all the other use cases for ELA for LSD for Hiawatha for psilocybin? Do you think that those will eventually become legalized to some extent more mainstream?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:07:06

Absolutely, to some extent. I think it’s going to be an aspect of correct

 

Scott D Clary  1:07:13

because even like LSD, there used to be research studies that were going on about the benefits of LSD and and those were almost killed. I don’t know the whole story. But animals were killed almost overnight, all those research studies from reputable universities and it was like, nope, tomorrow, you’re not touching this anymore.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:07:28

Right. With great power comes great responsibility. I think everybody can familiarize themselves with that sentence. I think, as the private sector and the public sector need to sit together and understand how to best move forward this for society. We need the FDA.

 

Scott D Clary  1:07:45

You need what you need when you need wins with ketamine to prove out that something that that has just sort of come into popularity now and is being used successfully is safe is effective. So you need good people. You need ethical people like ethical capitalism, I think is incredible good people to start businesses in to prove our model, the proven model, not people that price gouge, not people that grow at all costs, especially in pharmaceuticals and drugs, and even natural remedies. Like you can’t have those types of people in there. So you have to get rid of the people that are bad actors, to get rid of people that are trying to profit off of off of off of things like this. And then when you have successful models, ethical owners, entrepreneurs, founders that build businesses that are doing good for people, that’s the people that can lead to conversations.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:08:33

Yes, most people in the psychedelic industry that I’ve met, follow all of those factors. And I mean, I didn’t think I would have said this after studying social economic development, but the government plays a crucial role in all of this to happen. And I think there’s an incredible amount of intelligent people working for the government and agencies that follow data is the primary factor of decision making. And I think it’s a matter of us sitting together and receiving the proper guidelines for us to be able to make this an accessible, available, safe and effective form of alternative medicine for people. So it will be a matter of time research is absolutely imperative, because it takes on Outlook from science instead of capital generation. And I think that you’re starting to see it already.

 

Scott D Clary  1:09:19

Apsu is that also that to get something moving and to get something passed, and government takes such a long period of time, which is a reason why, when there’s when there’s when there’s something that’s been decided, like 5060 years later, it’s just been decided we’re not ever touching that again. So you need like, you need almost an overwhelming amount of positive evidence to get a conversation started.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:09:43

It’s important to not take a step back, correct? Yes, a very important message to your point that the government is aware of, and I think he’s starting to make a change into the pandemic, for example, on telemedicine law provided a huge opportunity for people to receive medicine and much more access So one affordable pricing because business models became much more efficient in the industry. I think it is the responsibility of all actors in the industry to realize that taking a step back could hurt a lot. And it has been hurting us a lot. If you look at the growth of human evolution or change in decision making, you see a linear fashion, when you look at changes in technology changes, innovation, human population growth. All of those are exponential graphs. So how to equate very different forms of rapid growth into a coexistent balance. And let’s call it equilibrium, if an industry is a very difficult one, and it will only happen if all factors of the industry align together. And at least what I am seeing is that type of cooperation from the government, from investors, from researchers, from consumers, from patients to really want to make this be a long term positive impact the industry. So

 

Scott D Clary  1:10:56

that to your point, I know, you wrote down some talking point. And you wrote down one that I thought was interesting, but I guess that’s really what you were discussing it was the human evolution, was this technological revolution? That’s, is that what you’re referring to?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:11:09

Yeah, it’s one of the Absolutely, it’s one of the concepts that I like to tend to entertain in conversation, it is the fact that technology revolution directly has a correlation or could have a potential causality in human evolution. And for the longest time, we understand that even our political systems are very, very static, almost, there’s lack of dynamism or adaptability in the systems and decision making, which granted provides us stability, but also provides lack of involvement. You see it with things like cryptocurrencies, how fast did that get adopted in society, and how hard and

 

Scott D Clary  1:11:52

regulation is still is still trying to keep up and still not unclear, can’t keep

 

Jose Muñoz  1:11:56

up, given how fast it’s evolving. And so it is a responsibility of government understanding that the private world has a very powerful potential to make positive change, and us understanding that the government has a critical component in making this happen. So it’s a pure collaboration and cooperation play.

 

Scott D Clary  1:12:18

After you build this company, where do you want to what do you want to do next? Because you sort of, you’ve now found something that can be they can be profitable, and still checks the box of positive human impact? So where do you see wonder med going? And then in your personal career, like what is the thing that you want to do at a larger scale is like now that you sort of clarified how to be successful, and drive profit and, and be entrepreneurial, and build something, while still achieving that positive human impact?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:12:53

I mean, those are very kind of words.

 

Scott D Clary  1:12:56

I mean, we’re hoping for the best.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:13:00

There’s a lot, there’s a lot to learn, I think that I want to keep on learning. By any means I consider myself an expert in everything I eat, there’s so much that I don’t know. And I will always have more to know than what I do know now, as a company wonder made wants to become the best version of ourselves to allow people to become the best version of themselves. In every facet of life. We’re focused on mental health, because we believe that’s a very important issue to tackle. But as a whole in the company and the people leading it. Positive Impact comes in various shapes and forms very different ones. I think, Wonder Man is going to come up with very special things in the near future for people to be able to continue improving. On a personal level, I think that I want to continue to strive to unify people to change socio political, socio economical ways of behaving in society, I want to unite the power of people to continue spreading the word that the 99% is more powerful than the 1% that there is value numbers, that one plus one equals three if you do the right thing. And I really don’t know how I’m gonna conceptualize that. But for now, my focus is being able to change people’s lives through wondering

 

Scott D Clary  1:14:15

why. Why did you write this down? I thought this was really interesting the meaning of life and how to find purpose and living. What does that mean to you? Throwing a curveball, right, the meaning of life at the

 

Jose Muñoz  1:14:36

I think when you get to explore ideas and concepts that don’t have a concrete answer, you sometimes can feel overwhelmed. You sometimes can feel

 

Scott D Clary  1:14:47

most of us would last let’s say yes. 100%.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:14:51

I think there is not an answer that we know for everything. And there probably will never be for a lot of things but If you take a hard look at the history as a society and humanity, we’re moving in a beautiful direction, besides all the negative things that are happening. So when I mean what the meaning of life is what the purpose is, people need a purpose to live, at least that’s what it seems like. And a lot of people don’t find themselves to fit into what’s currently happening in the current models, the current way of living. So as a topic of what the meaning of life is, what the purpose is, I think it’s a conversation that needs to be more present in conversations with people, in conversations in the government and conversations, and any form of business that you’re building with your team. Why are we here, there’s different ways of saying it. The other day, I heard a comedian saying that the meaning of life is to enjoy the passage of time. For another person like myself is to make a positive impact in the world, to make the my present moment and the future be better than the past. And a lot of people share this feeling. I think the vast majority of people in the world, the vast majority are good people. Sometimes the bad people, or the bad actions are much louder. But the vast majority are good people, there’s a lot of hope in the world, that things can go the right direction. And the meaning of life should be one in which people have an understanding that they belong, because they do belong to something they belong to where I belong, which is this world, this humanity. And working in mental health, a lot of people suffering from depression and anxiety sometimes lack this type of understanding. And it’s very important to have a speak to others that feel the same way that are going through the same. Because you’re not alone. This is something that can actually have a positive change in humanity at large. And what is there to life that enjoy living and making others enjoy living?

 

Scott D Clary  1:16:48

I love it. Okay, I want to I want to ask a couple rapid fire to close this out. Before I asked that, though, is there anything else that we didn’t go into, that I should have asked you? I

 

Jose Muñoz  1:17:02

think for the purpose of what we’re currently doing a Wunderman, I think it’s important for people to get a reminder that today, there was an opportunity for them to seek an alternative form of medicine that was not accessible, that they have an opportunity to explore, I would highly recommend them going to wonder med.com and learning more about the science of it information we provide and go through the flow to understand whether or not they’re a fit. And if they are to have a meaningful experience, I will refer them to provide feedback, which is what has been happening with most of our patients, they’re very open to explain what has been happening. And that currently the flow, we’ve made it as a safe, as efficient and as effective as possible. And that we want to improve from it. So that we want people right now to go for it, see the opportunity and then learn from them. And then we’re here for them. We’re literally building these to help people. So that’s the only thing that I would like to clarify. Before we’re going to wrap it right.

 

Scott D Clary  1:17:58

Where should people go? So wonder mat.com? Contact you social? Where do you want to send people?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:18:05

Yeah, myself or anybody in the team, I think we’re very receptive to people reaching out, you could go to LinkedIn to any of the leaders in the company, myself, Jose Munoz. I’m very active in LinkedIn more than anything. Go to the website, explore all the information that you have there reach out, we have a fantastic team of patient experience and support that can answer any questions that they have. And then be able to go through an experience where you could adapt your life one time, every week, four times a month, and really allow yourself to see whether or not this is something that can impact your life.

 

Scott D Clary  1:18:37

And give yourself permission to improve your life. I think that’s your mission yourself.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:18:40

Yeah. How are yourself? Okay,

 

Scott D Clary  1:18:42

a couple rapid fire. So what keeps you up at night now could be personal, it could be professional, what’s what’s top of mind that stresses you out?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:18:52

How to build the best team possible and culture to build a company that can change the world forever?

 

Scott D Clary  1:18:56

And how do you do that?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:18:59

With a lot of hard work with trust, with transparency, with openness, with vulnerability, and with love,

 

Scott D Clary  1:19:08

what’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome in your own personal life.

 

Jose Muñoz  1:19:13

I’m still trying to overcome it, which is how to navigate. Live, somebody that loves to work in the fullest sense with as many things as possible, from having time to take care of those that you love to enjoy the little things in life. I think I do a pretty good effort in making that happen. But the biggest challenge that I’ve faced in my life is overcome hardship, which a lot of people are going through now. I come from a very humble beginning. And yet I have always felt that I’m incredible. Incredibly, I shouldn’t be incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I had and where I was born with respect to everybody in the world. But I think you know, overcoming hardship, makes you who you are. So if anybody is going through the same To push forward, because that’s actually going to make you become who you truly want to be.

 

Scott D Clary  1:20:05

If you had to pick one person, there’s obviously been many to pick one person who’s had an incredible impact on your life mentor, anyone who wasn’t What do they teach you?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:20:20

I mean, this is gonna sound redundant, but I wish that everybody could say the same thing. My mother, I think somebody that can allow you to very deeply understand the power that you have to be happy with yourself, and therefore be able to make others happy to enjoy the little things in life in a very unique and creative way. So yeah, that’s the person I would say right now,

 

Scott D Clary  1:20:42

if you had to recommend some resource book, podcast, Reddit threads, something that you’d recommend people go check out what would it be?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:20:58

Think a book right now that I’m very interested and intrigued by is a book called justice.

 

Scott D Clary  1:21:03

There are that one, what are we

 

Jose Muñoz  1:21:04

doing the right thing I believe? It’s a book by a professor at Harvard, he actually has the biggest classroom right now. It’s an elective class in which he teaches through the book. In a very open like, situation asks very large questions around what is the right thing to do? What are the different ways in which we could look at decision making in life from social to political to economical in understanding how to do the right thing, which is a very difficult question to answer. Everybody thinks that they have an opinion that it’s right. He brings together multiple different extreme polar opposites concepts together in conversation, and makes you think that there’s a lot of nuance in life that we need to try to understand as fast as much as possible at all times, so I would highly recommend that book right now justice

 

Scott D Clary  1:21:55

knots, but if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be? My one sorry, 20 year old self, your 20 year old self, you could tell your 20 year old self one thing or 18

 

Jose Muñoz  1:22:08

keys. Keep going? Good.

 

Scott D Clary  1:22:12

And then last question, what does success mean to you?

 

Jose Muñoz  1:22:28

To make the world a better place to feel good while doing it and make others feel good.