Shownotes
Alessandro Grampa
Bio
I’m a serial impact entrepreneur on a mission to bridge ancient wisdom and modern science for peak performance. Founder of Wholegrain Wisdom—and with 11+ years in the startup world—I blend mindful living (I’m a Buddhist and digital nomad) with practical scientific biohacking protocols. I’m dedicating my life to helping people thrive and I do this by sharing the wisdom I learnt myself on the trenches.
Intro
In our engaging discourse, we delve into the profound insights of Alessandro Grampa, a distinguished serial entrepreneur who embodies the essence of resilience and adaptability in the ever-evolving landscape of startups. Alessandro elucidates the pivotal notion that entrepreneurship transcends mere career choices, evolving into a comprehensive lifestyle commitment marked by profound personal dedication and understanding. He candidly shares his transformative journey through the challenges of ADHD and depression, revealing how these adversities catalyzed his exploration of biohacking and meditation, ultimately informing his innovative approach to entrepreneurial success. As he navigates the intricacies of maintaining mental health while embracing a nomadic lifestyle, Alessandro emphasizes the paramount importance of aligning one’s physical and mental well-being with the demands of entrepreneurial ventures. This episode serves as a compelling blueprint for aspiring founders, underscoring the necessity of self-investment and the integration of ancient wisdom with contemporary practices to foster enduring resilience in the pursuit of one's entrepreneurial aspirations.
Conversation
The conversation with Alessandro Grampa unfolds against the backdrop of his extensive entrepreneurial journey, offering a rich tapestry of experiences that illuminate the complexities of startup life. Grampa, who embarked on his entrepreneurial path at just nineteen, provides a compelling narrative that intertwines his professional ventures with his personal challenges, particularly his struggles with ADHD and depression. His candid revelations about the emotional toll of entrepreneurship resonate deeply, as he highlights the necessity of resilience and self-awareness in navigating the inevitable ups and downs of building a business. Grampa’s perspective on entrepreneurship as a lifestyle choice rather than a mere career path adds a profound layer to the discussion, emphasizing the need for entrepreneurs to cultivate a holistic approach to their well-being.
Delving deeper into the core of his philosophy, Grampa elucidates how his past experiences have shaped his current venture, Whole Grain Wisdom, which bridges the gap between ancient practices and contemporary science. He advocates for the importance of nutrition and mindfulness, sharing how these elements have been pivotal in managing his mental health and enhancing his entrepreneurial capacity. The dialogue underscores the notion that true entrepreneurial resilience is cultivated through intentional lifestyle choices, which can significantly impact one’s ability to innovate and thrive in a competitive landscape.
As the episode draws to a close, Grampa’s insights serve as a guiding light for aspiring entrepreneurs, urging them to embrace their struggles and recognize the inherent wisdom within. His assertion that the challenges faced in entrepreneurship can lead to profound personal growth ultimately reinforces the idea that success is not solely defined by external achievements but is also rooted in one’s capacity for self-discovery and resilience. This episode is a testament to the transformative power of entrepreneurship, encouraging listeners to pursue their passions while prioritizing their health and well-being.
Takeaways
- Alessandro emphasizes that entrepreneurship is a profound lifestyle commitment, not merely a career choice.
- His journey through ADHD and depression led to the discovery of biohacking and meditation, which fuel his success.
- The true essence of being a founder lies in embracing one's challenges as sources of strength and wisdom.
- Identifying genuine purpose is paramount before embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, as it shapes one's commitment.
- Investing in one's health, through nutrition and mindfulness, directly correlates with entrepreneurial effectiveness and resilience.
- Alessandro's experiences illustrate the importance of balancing ancient wisdom with modern scientific insights for holistic well-being.
- Whole Grain Wisdom on YouTube
- Alessandro's LinkedIn
- Wholegrain Wisdom
- Jothy's TEDx talk - On why those with disabilities tend to overachieve
- The Who Says I Can't Foundation - Jothy's non-profit that helps disabled kids get back into a sport they love to restore their self-esteem
- Our YouTube channel
- Designing Successful Startups — Jothy Rosenberg | Author | Speaker | Podcaster - Site with all podcasts
- Tech Startup Toolkit book
- Please leave us a review
Transcripts
Foreign.
Speaker B:Rosenberg, the host of Designing Successful Startups, where today's guest is Alessandro Grandpa.
Speaker A:If anyone wants to do this, they would.
Speaker A:They need to understand that this is a lifestyle.
Speaker A:I mean, it's not that I.
Speaker A:I'm done with my second company and now I'm going to look for a job.
Speaker A:I'm unemployable.
Speaker A:Every founder, every real entrepreneur is completely unemployable.
Speaker A:So this is a lifestyle choice that you need to make.
Speaker B:Welcome to Designing Successful Startups, the podcast where we explore the minds behind innovative ventures and uncover the real secrets to entrepreneurial resilience.
Speaker B:Today, we're speaking with Alessandro Grandpa, a serial entrepreneur who's mastered the art of building companies while living as a digital nomad.
Speaker B:From his first startup at just age 19 to scaling a vertical farming venture, to nearly series A to Alessandro shares how he transformed personal struggles with depression and ADHD into a unique approach to entrepreneurial success.
Speaker B:Currently speaking to us from Kuala Lumpur, Alessandro reveals how ancient wisdom, biohacking and reconnecting with nature have become his foundation for building his newest venture.
Speaker B:If you've ever wondered how to maintain your mental health while riding the startup roller coaster, this episode is your blueprint for entrepreneurial resilience.
Speaker B:Hello, Alessandro, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker A:Hi, Jyoti, how's it going?
Speaker B:It's going great.
Speaker B:I actually like to start off by, and this is an unusual question for you because you are such a nomad.
Speaker B:Tell us where you're originally from and where you are at the moment and maybe like where you're gonna go next because you're moving around so much.
Speaker A:I was born in Italy.
Speaker A:I'm Italian blood.
Speaker A:Italian blood.
Speaker A:Even though I left Italy the first time When I was 17, I traveled a little bit everywhere and then I came back for another six years, something like that.
Speaker A:And then recently, last August of last year, I re left definitely Italy for another adventure with my wife.
Speaker A:I'm currently based, or actually I'm currently having the conversation from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
Speaker A:And next week I'm actually moving into Japan for something that is kind of in between a honeymoon that we.
Speaker A:We had pending with my wife since a couple of years almost.
Speaker A:And also our nomadic lifestyle that we really love doing so far.
Speaker B:And you've been doing it for how long?
Speaker A:Depends in.
Speaker A:In which way you, you, you look at it.
Speaker A:So the real fully nomadic lifestyle, working from remote and not really having any.
Speaker A:Any base anymore.
Speaker A: It's been since last October: Speaker A:We've been traveling A lot.
Speaker A:We've been living in the past years in different countries, but we always had kind of like a step or like a closet back in Italy.
Speaker A:But right now the closet is actually like an underground deposit and our house is on Airbnb.
Speaker A:So even if we want to go back, we would probably have to cancel some reservation of guests.
Speaker B:So you go to all these different places.
Speaker B:I can't imagine you speak Japanese, for example.
Speaker B:I know you speak Italian and English, obviously.
Speaker B:How many languages total do you speak?
Speaker A:4.
Speaker A:I do speak also Spanish and I used to speak very, very well French because I lived in Quebec, in Canada when I was a, was a teenager.
Speaker B:And so when you go to a place like where you are now or where or, or Japan is the, is the default language that you fall back on English or what do you try to do to communicate when you're in a place like Japan and you don't speak that language?
Speaker A:Of course, when you are in Latin America, you can just speak Spanish everywhere.
Speaker A:It's quite easy.
Speaker A:But yeah, here in Asia, I would say English is a very well known language.
Speaker A:So it's relatively easy.
Speaker A:So far it has been relatively easy.
Speaker A:When people do not speak a lot of English or you really want to try to convey a message that is a little bit more sophisticated, let's say, from a simple conversation.
Speaker A:Then I have to say that Google Translate is a great, great tool.
Speaker A:As long as of course, you have Internet.
Speaker B:You've done a lot of startups and you've had some good experiences and some, some very challenging times as well.
Speaker B:Well, first of all, why don't you tell us about some of the things that you've built and what they were, you know.
Speaker B:What got you excited about creating these various startups along the way?
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Well, I, I started my first real company like funding with like incorporating my real first company when I was 19.
Speaker A:I was still in Bachelor.
Speaker A:And it was a company that, those were the years where Airbnb was becoming a big thing and the gig economy was exploding, uber exploding as well.
Speaker A:And me and my co founder at the time, which was also one of my best friends, we opened up a platform to basically open the houses of different people around Italy.
Speaker A:And of course eventually we wanted to expand worldwide for basically open their kitchens and host dinners or lunches, whatever, with guests.
Speaker A:So this was even before Airbnb experiences was even a thing.
Speaker A:And we faced, let's say, the big vision of saying there are so many people with this talent of just cooking and doing home meals and there are so many people that are traveling and wanted to have local experiences, authentic experiences.
Speaker A:Let's not forget that Airbnb started with that goal in mind right now of course it became a little bit of a different thing.
Speaker A:I don't think I met my host for the past four or five years while going into Airbnb.
Speaker A:So definitely not a very local experience.
Speaker A:But anyhow, so we started the company and strangely enough there, there has been like a booming of other platforms at the very same time.
Speaker A:So that was probably the very first experience I had with having almost more offer than the demand itself from the market.
Speaker A:But let's say during those years we managed to sustain the company for around two years and a half, something like that.
Speaker A:We got some early traction, the first dinners happening and the guest and the host and so on.
Speaker A:I think in that time the biggest ever challenge was finding a technical co founder.
Speaker A:And the funny story was that my co founder was the more technical among the two but he was not a developer.
Speaker A:And during those years he actually studied on his own how to become a developer and now he's working since many, many years into coding and as a cto.
Speaker A:So that I would say that was the experience that made us understand what, who we wanted to be in life later on.
Speaker A:And I definitely understood that I wanted to become an entrepreneur because the rush of energy and excitement doing that, that activity, let alone the meeting other people and just presenting yourself as the founder of.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:You have no experience, you have no network, nobody knows who the heck are you, but you can go and knock the doors of very high level people and just say look, I'm Alessandro, I'm the founder of.
Speaker A:Why don't we have a chat.
Speaker A:I have this proposition going on, right?
Speaker A:So that was very, very great.
Speaker B:The startup you just described is so, it's so Italian because everybody seems to know how to cook.
Speaker B:Everybody makes great food.
Speaker B:With all this traveling, I'll bet you miss the food and the wine somewhat.
Speaker A:So I don't drink anymore.
Speaker A:Seems a little bit.
Speaker A:So I mean I don't actively look for it anymore.
Speaker A:Let's say let's see what happens in Japan because for sure the gastronomy there, it's another level.
Speaker A:But yeah, when it comes to food I, I always got like a taste for a little bit of everything.
Speaker A:So I don't really miss a lot Italian food.
Speaker A:Plus I think for me it's also a little bit different.
Speaker A:I'm a little bit of a high maintenance guy when it comes to nutrition.
Speaker A:I had my own problems and actually it's part of my own story, right?
Speaker A:I've been depressed for so many years and I discovered after more than 10 years that gluten was my problem.
Speaker A:One of of the problems that it was causing inflammation throughout the whole body and it was going into my head, so it was making me chronically depressed.
Speaker A:So also right now I need to be kind of careful of what I eat.
Speaker A:And the good thing of this nomadic lifestyle, I would say, which is different than just traveling five days in a place, five days in a ladder.
Speaker A:We mostly tend to rent one month places.
Speaker A:So in this case is like you literally have your own house for a month and then next month is going to be a next one and you live like local.
Speaker B:When you're cooking in this house, do you try to learn the, the gastronomy of the place you're living?
Speaker A:Try my best integrating as much as possible for different reasons.
Speaker A:The first one is that eating food that comes from very far away, it's, it's not a lot of my thing, let's say, but especially from a scientific perspective, it kind of sends a wrong signal to your body because you know, the food absorbs the, the sun and different other chemicals in the soil where it grows and all of these from a quantum level perspective.
Speaker A:And we can, I mean we can go even into quantum physics if we want to, but let's say in a very simple level, this information, because the sun sends a specific signal, it basically gets absorbed by the food.
Speaker A:And when you eat it and is the wrong season, is the wrong location, is the wrong temperature, it kind of messes up with the information of your body because your body is absorbing this food and is absorbing the information as well.
Speaker A:That's why you shouldn't be really eating a lot of food that comes from far away or from very different climatic regions.
Speaker A:By the way, your body is like, you know, you're in the middle of winter and you start eating, I don't know, passion fruit.
Speaker A:Your body doesn't understand why, come on, it's winter outside, but it's, you're eating passion fruit which is supposed to be sunny.
Speaker A:So, okay, there's something not like wrong going on.
Speaker B:You did mention, of course, just a moment ago that you've, you've been depressed, you've, you've kind of done a lot of self reflection and you've understood that you have some other health challenges, mental, you know, things that you've been through, stress, panic attacks, what caused some of that?
Speaker B:When did you start to realize those were happening?
Speaker A:The realization is, is a very, very different moment.
Speaker A:And also the levels of understanding of this realization, the people that are into these kind of topics and, and they work in deep, either therapy or just alternative medicine, they will talk about healing.
Speaker A:The healing process.
Speaker A:It's something that actually takes a very long while, it can even take the whole lifetime.
Speaker A:And for some people it just never happens because they're just gonna be stuck in their own old narrative for forever, for the whole life.
Speaker A:But for me, I look back at my past when I was a kid and what I learned, especially like talking with my parents and going back into understanding a little bit what was the inner child kind of patterns back in the times.
Speaker A:I've been always a very, very active kid.
Speaker A:I'm one of those people that if you look into the astrological kind of descriptors of a type of person, I'm a manifesto.
Speaker A:So I'm a person that has a ton of energy throughout the body and needs absolutely like a way to ground it down and do things with that energy.
Speaker A:Because if you trap it inside, I'm just going to get mad, completely mad.
Speaker A:I was very healthy and good and active up until I got into primary school.
Speaker A:And as you can imagine, I was trapped in like a box, which is the building, and then of course, to be sitting on the table and a desk and a chair all day long.
Speaker A:So from there on I started to be like, you know, the kid that was hyperactive at school and the professor who had to call my parents every now and then to say, hey, Alessandro is never able to like focus on the things to be done and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:But let's say the real work for me, it started when I was on my second company.
Speaker A:So as I mentioned before, my first company lasted two years.
Speaker A:Now in the middle, like right after closing my first company, I went to Colombia to reach my partner at the time, which is my wife.
Speaker A:Now during that time there was kind of a transition.
Speaker A:I started working with shamans and traditional medicine, acupuncture and so on.
Speaker A:And I was starting to feel better for the first time in a long time.
Speaker A:But then I got back to Europe and during my master, I met my previous co founder of my last company.
Speaker A:We were into vertical farming and the company went relatively well.
Speaker A:We went on to raise significant amount of funding, revenues and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:But during those years, the amount of stress was getting higher and higher every day.
Speaker A:So I got to a point where first my like normal symptoms, which were always like sore throats and agroactivity, anger and so on, they just got into a moment Where I started having panic attacks because my blood, my, my system was overwhelmed.
Speaker A:It was too much energy and it was not able to be grounded.
Speaker A:And of course I didn't have the tools that I have now.
Speaker A:So back then I started to, to do breathing exercises.
Speaker A:It was relatively easy at the beginning.
Speaker A:I just needed to figure out a way to calm down.
Speaker A:And fortunately Spotify and several guided meditations really, really helped.
Speaker A:I remember and I tell relatively on public like relatively often, that I used to close up myself during the lunch break in what we call the panic room, which was kind of like a meeting room with the isolated windows and panels.
Speaker A:And I was going there just to have some quiet time, putting on my 30, 30 minutes guided meditation and okay, breathing calm me down.
Speaker A:And it was funny because after six months doing that, I realized that I never had any, any more panic attacks ever in my life.
Speaker A:I started looking at the effects because you could really see from one week to another this whole new routine going into your subconscious, becoming your real habit and your like your day to day normal activity as you would normally brush your teeth or go to the bathroom in the morning, you know, this kind of basic activities.
Speaker A:So after that I said to myself, okay, I'm breathing.
Speaker A:I learned how to breathe.
Speaker A:So as soon as I, I see the stress level coming up, I just know subconsciously that I need to realize it and observe it and just stop one second and do, okay, that already just doing this from a scientific point of view, you are lowering down the cortisol levels of the organs in your body.
Speaker A:And after that I went into meditation because I, I asked myself, okay, who really knows how to do this kind of work?
Speaker A:Which at the beginning I thought it was a simple meditation.
Speaker A:And I went into Buddhism.
Speaker A:And from there basically they introduced me to the ancient wisdom of the east, you know, the Tibetan Buddhism, and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:This was, let's say, the first part, what I call the circle of the mind that I started working on.
Speaker A:But later in the years, especially during COVID I really had huge problems when it came to the body, the physical health.
Speaker A:I was stuck at home for many months, as everybody else did, but for me it was even worse because these stress levels and as I am as a person, very active, I couldn't ground once again.
Speaker A:So the meditations were not enough.
Speaker A:I used to meditate every single day, but still I had to move my body to ground down my energy.
Speaker A:So that's when I connected for the first time.
Speaker A:After the exercises and the work that I did with the Shamals In Colombia, many years before, I connected with a functional doctor who told me very simply, look, Alessandro, we don't need to do any more exams.
Speaker A:I've been doing exams like medical exams, blood tests and whatever other things for many years and more than 10 years.
Speaker A:He said, don't do any more exams.
Speaker A:Just stop eating gluten, stop eating lactose, do this diet for 40 days and see what works, what's next?
Speaker A:And after a week, I woke up for the very first time in my life without brain fog.
Speaker A:I was mind blown.
Speaker A:I was like, is this how normal people are supposed to feel?
Speaker A:Like, really?
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:I was not depressed.
Speaker A:I was not like, I cannot focus too much, and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:So that was the time where I started working on the circle of the body.
Speaker A:So first was mind, now body.
Speaker A:And during the work of the body, I went into biohacking.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:I like to say that I basically did a PhD on my own while running the startup because I came from the background of gastronomy.
Speaker A:At my university.
Speaker A:I always studied topics related to food, nutrition, chemical chemistry, and all of the processes in body.
Speaker A:So for me, biohacking was kind of like a very needed and automated way to go deeper into topics that I used to be studying before.
Speaker A:And it changed also completely my understanding of what are you supposed to be eating, how are you supposed to be eating, and every other thing that you can do for optimizing your own biology so that you can live better and have more energy and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:And I can go on and on with this topic.
Speaker A:So you just stop me when you want and you ask me another question.
Speaker B:Hi, the podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, Tech Startup Toolkit, how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.
Speaker B:This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.
Speaker B:I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.
Speaker B:You could get it from all the usual booksellers.
Speaker B:I hope you like it.
Speaker B:It's a true labor of love.
Speaker B:Now, back to the show.
Speaker B:Before you started the Nomad, how many startups did you do?
Speaker B:You did so the one that was sort of Airbnb for dinners.
Speaker A:The second one, this last one was on vertical farming.
Speaker A:It was actually the biggest venture because it was almost 10 years and we were able to scale up, up to like almost Series A.
Speaker A:We were able to to sell internationally.
Speaker A:We did a lot of work and it was a very complex company, let's say, because we were a mix of hardware and software, but also there was biology in it because we had to grow real food vertically, soillessly, within these new technologies with LED lighting and aeroponics and hydroponics and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:But yeah, that was for me what made me understand what it meant to build a real company.
Speaker A:Like the very first company was like just a trial, let's say like okay, we started, we saw what happened.
Speaker A:But the second company, we had investors, we had a team, we had international sales, we went into like seven figures revenue.
Speaker A:So it went very far.
Speaker B:And you were the CEO.
Speaker A:I was sharing the role of management with my co founder.
Speaker A:I was primarily looking at the front end business part.
Speaker A:My co founder was primarily looking at the backend product development part.
Speaker B:So it's like you were CEO and he was coo would be how some people would describe that.
Speaker A:I've never had a real CEO title itself, but I led the activities of business and funding myself.
Speaker B:The title isn't what matters.
Speaker B:What matters is the cold sweats and the stress.
Speaker A:Whoa.
Speaker A:Yeah, I joke to say it now, I joke to remind these things now, but I spent so many nights sleeplessly like thinking I was dreaming the burn rate flow.
Speaker A:You know, I had the conditional formatting on my Excel burn rate table and as soon as it was going slowly down, it was becoming orange and then red and then rather redder, rather, rather dark.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was stressful.
Speaker B:I do completely relate to the feeling and the stress that after a while, you know, I, I still say the experience of doing a startup is, I would say overall is a joyful experience for, for the same reasons you described at the beginning of this conversation.
Speaker B:The thrill, the creativity, the flexibility, the closeness of the team, all of those things.
Speaker B:But what comes with it, of course is that, is that stress.
Speaker A:And I'm doing a startup while I'm a nomad and completely the way that I've been thinking about doing startups for the past 11 years.
Speaker B:Well, which startup are you doing now?
Speaker B:The farming?
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:Right now, I, I, I, I founded Whole Grain Wisdom, which started as my own newsletter where I, I wanted to kind of again ground down all of the wisdom and all of the learnings that I gathered throughout the years when it came to physical, mental and spiritual slash emotional health.
Speaker A:And I'm building what I like to call like the founder bible for resilience.
Speaker A:So the idea for me is that I received a very potent calling you the past couple of years and my mission right now is to bridge ancient wisdom and science because at the End of the day, we are all saying the same thing since thousands of years.
Speaker A:The problem is that every single new person that comes on the show, they will try to tell you, oh, that's my method or that's my trademark, that's how I call it.
Speaker A:The reality is that there is only one truth and we've been telling this truth since the man was even born like 200,000 years ago on the, on the planet.
Speaker A:So my job now is recollecting all of these dots because again, I'm a macro thinker, I'm an holistic viewer.
Speaker A:So I have the natural ability that I can really see distant things and connect the dots like as, as if in my head I was looking at the map and I was just drawing, playing, drawing with the path.
Speaker A:So this is my focus right now.
Speaker A:I'm, I'm working and building whole grain wisdom while I'm a nomad, while I primarily live outdoors, except today because I'm in a city and reconnecting completely with the natural patterns and the rational, the natural rhythms of reconnecting with nature.
Speaker A:And you cannot believe how more powerful, how more energetic, how more efficient and focused I am since I actually moved back to nature.
Speaker A:I can almost feel right now, especially in these days that in Kuala Lumpur you can feel it, the quantity of like electromagnetic fields from all of the wifi, all of the signals, whatever the lighting, it kind of fucks up your body and it disconnects all of these natural automatic systems that happening happen in your body.
Speaker A:And so yeah, I'm working hard to make people understand the science behind it, but also reminding us that we knew this truth since thousand and thousand of years ago.
Speaker B:The first that you discovered how hard it is and how, and you also discovered that you had ADHD and you had, you know, you had a, a challenge, you know, and a lot of us have some sort of a, a real challenge that sparks this kind of strength of resilience and perseverance, which of course the other word for that is grit.
Speaker B:What do you think the root of, of your way of dealing with these huge challenges, some that are inside you and some that are external and that you have to just react to and deal with.
Speaker A:It depends a lot on the type of person that you have in front of you and which kind of story they would be a little bit more attuned, let's say, to be listening.
Speaker A:I always like to say that there is a spiritual way of seeing things and then there is a very pragmatic way of think of seeing the same things.
Speaker A:And that's where the disconnection between the ancient wisdom and the science comes from.
Speaker A:Fortunately, quantum physics is helping us to reunite the conversation and the narrative.
Speaker A:But beside this topic, it's always hard for, like, a specific individual to give, like, one tip or one way to do things.
Speaker A:What I learned is that there are tons of different ways to do it.
Speaker A:And every single one of us came to this life to experience one of the billion or gazillion different types of this path.
Speaker A:My journey could have been any other than suffering in this way and having problems with nutrition.
Speaker A:And that's also why I studied nutrition and food at the very time.
Speaker A:And maybe I could not have been Italian not having this experience, right?
Speaker A:Because I came from, like, food is so important for.
Speaker A:For my.
Speaker A:For myself and for my history.
Speaker A:Other people may not even care about food.
Speaker A:And they have other challenges.
Speaker A:They have other problems.
Speaker A:So meditation, for sure, helps you to understand the nature of the mind.
Speaker A:And if you want to put it very spiritually, you understand that actually everything is in the mind.
Speaker A:There is nothing real outside of the mind.
Speaker A:It's just an expectation that the minds would like to see something and would expect to see something, and you see it.
Speaker A:And this is at the base core of manifestation.
Speaker A:If a lot of people now it's kind of becoming a little bit more popular to, like, do very deep meditations so that you can already project yourself to your future version that you want to become and already feel it and already think that you are there so that you start to attract that specific reality.
Speaker A:And it's crazy, because we are now proving all of this very thing with science.
Speaker A:So for me, the first realization that really made me go from.
Speaker A:I have a very pessimistic person to like, okay, there is something wrong in the way that I'm seeing the world is because I always find thought that I was objective.
Speaker A:People were telling me, oh, you're so pessimistic.
Speaker A:And I'm like, no, I'm simply objective.
Speaker A:Because I can see that this is not working, and I complain about it.
Speaker A:But complaining doesn't bring you anywhere.
Speaker A:Complaining should just make you understand that there is something here that is not working in your opinion, and you want to fix it.
Speaker A:And then you can become an entrepreneur and change the things if you.
Speaker A:If you have enough grit.
Speaker A:But also the other thing is that the eyes, the signal of what you are seeing, like the visual image that you see with your eyes, is actually arriving, like, a percentage of a second later than how your body is already reacting to a stimulus.
Speaker A:So this is the proof, and this has been shown by science, that your brain is already acting in a way and your eyes are only confirming afterwards what the brain was expecting to see.
Speaker A:And it's crazy because if you look into all of these studies and there are beautiful books like the, the Happiness Advantage, the Power of Habits and so on and so forth that are explaining you very clearly from a sense, from scientific examples, how all of this is coming into your perceived reality.
Speaker A:So there have been studies where people have been given different prompts for the very same task.
Speaker A:The prompt that was prompt positively brought much better results to the people making the experiment compared to the people that were not.
Speaker A:You know, there is a famous example of these ladies that are cleaning hotels, the rooms and so on, and they were all relatively overweight also because of their social status.
Speaker A:And once they made an exercise with the therapist and a scientist that they all explained, these ladies that for every single action that they were doing unconsciously because of their job, like, you know, changing the sheet or replacing a tower and so on, and they were explaining them how many calories that action was actually consuming in terms of ports for their body, you know, that the end of the study, they all lost weight, not changing any single thing of their own actions during the day.
Speaker A:They were doing the same actions, but they just knew that those actions were actually the same calorie burning that going to the gym and they lost weight.
Speaker A:So it's unbelievable.
Speaker A:So, long story short, it's all here in the mind.
Speaker B:Very enlightening conversation with you.
Speaker B:I think your views, your philosophy are probably really helpful for people who are thinking about going into a startup for the first time, being a.
Speaker B:A liter of it, because it is hard, but it is doable and it's worth it.
Speaker B:But you have to be prepared for keeping yourself healthy, mentally healthy.
Speaker B:I've experienced it, you've experienced it.
Speaker B:It takes a real toll on you if you aren't taking good care of yourself.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And if anyone wants to do this, they would.
Speaker A:They need to understand that this is a lifestyle.
Speaker A:I mean, it's not that I'm done with my second company and now I'm going to look for a job.
Speaker A:I'm unemployable.
Speaker A:Every founder, every real entrepreneur is completely unemployable.
Speaker A:So this is a lifestyle choice that you need to make and you don't need to make it as soon as possible just for the sake of it, because somebody's pushing you through.
Speaker A:I think the very key is understanding what is your purpose.
Speaker A:What is, what is that very little thing that you cannot really sleep at night if it's not working good, if it's not fixed, if it's not the way you want it, and then of course be ready, as you said, for, for the, for the hustle, because it's real, it shouldn't be toxic.
Speaker A:Which that's another topic.
Speaker A:And of course the best investment is always on the longevity of yourself, your body, your your mental health, your emotional health.
Speaker A:Especially because we all have so many traumas from the past that we haven't not we have not resolved.
Speaker A:And we think that just working harder is going to solve them by itself and actually it just makes it worse.
Speaker A:So that's probably already the majority of the pain that we suffer as entrepreneurs is just because we are trying to fix with our companies the traumas of the past that we don't really have either the skills or the courage sometimes to solve.
Speaker B:Well, on that note, I want to thank you for this conversation and I appreciate your time.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:It's been a pleasure for me.
Speaker B:Here are your toolkit takeaways.
Speaker B:Your biggest challenges often become your greatest strengths.
Speaker B:Alessandro's journey with ADHD and depression led him to discover the biohacking and meditation practices that now fuel his entrepreneurial success.
Speaker B:Don't run from your struggles.
Speaker B:They might contain the wisdom you need to differentiate your venture.
Speaker B:Entrepreneurship isn't just a career choice, it's a lifestyle commitment.
Speaker B:As Alessandro puts it.
Speaker B:True founders are unemployable.
Speaker B:They're driven by solving problems that keep them up at night.
Speaker B:And before jumping in, identify your genuine purpose and be ready for the long term lifestyle adjustment that comes with it.
Speaker B:Invest in your biological foundation.
Speaker B:Alessandro discovered that his mental fog was linked to nutritional issues, showing how our physical well being directly impacts our entrepreneurial capacity.
Speaker B:Prioritize sleep, nutrition and physical movement as your most critical business investments and balance ancient wisdom with modern science in your approach to entrepreneurial resilience.
Speaker B:Whether it's meditation to manage stress or reconnecting with natural environments to boost creativity, these time tested practices can be your competitive advantage in building a sustainable startup journey.
Speaker B:The show notes contain useful resources and links.
Speaker B:Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com DesigningSuccessful startups also please share and like us on your social media channels.
Speaker B:This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.
