Today I am speaking with Ariel Garten. Ariel is probably one of the most interesting people you will meet. She is a psychotherapist, Neuroscientist, mom, former fashion designer, and the female founder and visionary of an amazing and highly successful tech start-up Muse. Muse tracks your brain during meditation to give you real-time feedback on your meditation, guiding you into the “zone” and solving the problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice. Muse lets you know when you are doing it right. When Ariel is not reading brains (literally) or investing in, inspiring and advising other start-ups and women in biz, you can find her on stages across the world, from TED to MIT to SXSW. She inspires people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by learning what goes on in their own mind. Ariel is also the co-host of the Untangle Podcast.

This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. This series is a platform for women, female-identified, & non-binary individuals to share their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their story. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age, status, or industry. 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with women. Female identified and non binary individuals regarding their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their perspective. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts, regardless of age, status or industry. We intend to transparently investigate the evolving global dialog regarding underrepresented figures in all industries across the USA and abroad by hosting these stories and conversations. We aim to contribute to the changing platform and representation of these individuals for the future. If you're enjoying this podcast series, be sure to check out our subsequent series called Roundtable with Patricia Kathleen, where we talk with a panel of guests regarding key topics that arise in these individual interviews. You can subscribe to all of our podcast series on iTunes, Stitcher or Pod Bean, as well as our Web site. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. And you can also contact me directly via this Web site or through my media Web site. Wild dot agency. That's w i. L. D e dot agency. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

[00:01:30] My time will be off to the races.

[00:01:38] I said your name right? Ariel, Garten.

[00:01:40] You did. You're actually like the only person ever. So great job.

[00:01:45] I wonder if my little mermaid like, The Little Mermaid with Ariel. Is that how people like to say it?

[00:01:52] People say air-i-el. I say you say r-e-el, which is the right way, but nobody ever does it.

[00:01:57] So, yay, I'm glad. OK.

[00:02:00] Make sure. Yes. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Ariel Garten. Ariel is the founder of Muse, which is a tech startup, a device that gives you Real-Time feedback during and post meditation. You can locate it online at w w w dot. Choose News dot com. Welcome, Ariel.

[00:02:23] Thank you, Patricia.

[00:02:23] It is a joy to be here. I am excited to climb through what you're doing. I'm really excited to have you on today for everyone listening. I will read a brief bio on Ariel.

[00:02:32] Before I do that, though, a quick roadmap of today's podcast will follow the trajectory that all of those in these series do. Namely, we will first unpack oriels academic and brief professional life so that we have a basis of a platform understanding where she came to developing news. Then we will look at unpacking news and the device. What it does, the data that it captures will also get into the nuts and bolts of her enterprise, which is the who, what, when, where, why and how. For all of you entrepreneurs out there, you guys like to hear about founders ship funding. We'll get into all of those logistics and then we'll turn our efforts towards looking at the ethos and kind of the philosophy behind the company. Then we will look towards goals that Orio might have towards the next one to three years. How she's kind of reconceptualizing goals, though, that dialog has changed for a lot of you. Given the recent pandemic, and it's interesting to hear for all of us about that change, and then we will wrap everything up with advice that RTL might have for those of you who want to get involved in what she's doing and perhaps emulate some of her career success. So a quick bio on Orio before I start peppering her with questions. Ariel Garten is probably one of the most interesting people you will meet. She is a psychotherapist, neuroscientist's mom, former fashion designer, and the female founder and visionary of an amazing and highly successful tech startup Muse. News tracks your brain during meditation to give you real time feedback on your meditation, guiding you into the zone and solving problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice. Mused, Let's you know when you are doing it right? When Orio is not reading brains literally or investing in inspiring and advising other tech startups and women and bears, you can find her on stages across the world, from Ted to M.I.T. to south by Southwest. She inspires people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by learning what goes on in their own mind. Oriol is also the co-host of the Untangled podcast. So Orio, I want to climb through all of that. You have such a prolific history and and what isn't in your bio that I do know from our research is that you have even more history on the back end before Muse was in two realities. I'm hoping right now you can unpack some of your professional and academic background to develop like your own personal platform.

[00:04:57] Sure. So my whole life, I've been kind of split between arts and sciences when I was a teenager in high school. I excelled at the arts. I excelled at sciences. I had a job in a research lab doing embryonic stem stem cell research on knockout mice in the 90s. And I also had a tiny clothing line that I sold on consignment to stores in downtown Toronto where I lived. So I was always kind of parlaying between the world of art and the world of science. And back in the 90s, people would say, well, you can't be an artist and a scientist. You have to choose. You can't do both. And when I went to school, when I went to university, I chose to go for neuroscience because I felt like if you went to arts, you couldn't go back into the sciences yet to continue on with the sciences and then keep doing the arts on the side. So in university, I studied neuroscience at the University of Toronto. I also had an art gallery that I ran. And then as soon as I graduated, I opened a clothing store in basically the front of my house. I was just like, OK, I need to do this clothing thing because I've done the science thing for four years. Yeah. I then continued to work in research labs part time while I ran a clothing line that what I was selling across North America and a store retail store in downtown Toronto. All of this being entirely unable to sew. So it's like I'll just start a clothing line, even though I've no idea how to sew. But I love fashion and I can figure it out. And my family business was very, very small scale real estate. So I was also helping out the family business at the same time. So I was had these multiple career trajectories going simultaneously. I was fascinated by all of them and always kind of felt like I could do what ever I put my mind to.

[00:06:44] So in my mid 20s, I started collaborating with Dr. Steve Mann. He's one of the inventors, the wearable computer. And he had an early brain computer interface system. I began working in his laboratory, working on basically concerts that you made with your mind. These artistic endeavors with real scientific information from the brain and really started to marry. My art and science approached the world. And from there, I became inspired to take this technology that was letting you literally interact with the world directly with your brain.

[00:07:18] It was a brain computer interface and try to take it to market and create my own business. And that's how myself and my two co-founders, Chris Emeny and Trevor Coleman, created news.

[00:07:29] Fantastic.

[00:07:30] So you have two co-founders that kind of dropped us into the next question that I have, which is the top three tiers of logistics, which is co-founders funding and year you launched.

[00:07:43] So I started working in Steve's lab in 2000 to 2002, 2003. And in those early days, we were creating concerts using this early brain computer interface system. And I began collaborating at that point with Chris. Amy. Chris was Steve's master's student. And he was just the most brilliant engineer you could ever meet. And also had an incredible understanding about humanity and art and the soul. And so as I started to think that this technology could come out of the lab, I got together with him as the CTO, the company. And Trevor Coleman, who is my boyfriend at the Times, best friend. And the three of us founded Muz. But before founding Muse, we spent many years playing around and Trevor's basement and in Steve's laboratory, figuring out what this technology could do. And so probably 2007, we really agreed that, yes, reforming a startup. In 2009, we incorporated and had our first big project, which was at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. We the first funding that we had came in twenty twelve I reck. I was the CEO of the company and recognized that we would need to raise funds. We got paid for Olympics projects. We were able to bootstrap for many years. And when we started to raise funding, I went out first to New York that Boston, San Francisco to raise funds and ultimately probably. Or first. Yeah. First round is four million dollars from FEC in New York. And our very first investor was actually Chad Menteng, who was at that point. Google's jolly good fellow. He was the guy who started Google's meditation program. Also search inside yourself. Since then, yes, it was amazing. So since then, we've raised I personally raised eighteen point two million dollars as the CEO of the company from, I guess, 2012 until 2015. In 2015, I stepped down from maternity leave and brought in another CEO. And to date, the company's raised probably around 30 million dollars.

[00:09:54] Wow, that is amazing. What round are you guys on? Moving into Runcie. Brilliant. That's amazing.

[00:10:01] I mean, and it's it's an incredible. I think there are a lot of people that get to a certain position and phase out, particularly with that kind of longevity in a career. You know, you can kind of very few founders anymore kind of staying on and hanging around past that point. I'm wondering, in the beginning when you said you were going to I don't know if it was trade shows or in 2009 or 2012 when you started kind of getting out there. What was the gradual change of the product or was there a story like how did it you know, companies grow with funding traditionally on a lot of different levels. But I'm interested in before we describe the product of it as it is now, the device.

[00:10:44] What was the original product or device like?

[00:10:48] So this is pretty funny. Originally, we started with a technology and a technology that was in search of a solution. So we had this device that let you put an electrode on the back of your head. And by focusing or relaxing, you could change some element, sound, light, etc.. So initially we thought we were going to go after a thought controlled computing. As you shifted your brain state, it would allow you to control the lighting in a room or control, you know, a cursor on a computer screen. And we did a lot of demos and experiences showing people that you could literally shift your brain state and make music or brighten a light. The project that we did at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics let people in Vancouver control the lights on the and tower Canadian prime buildings and Niagara Falls with their brain from across the country. So we had tens of thousands of people literally interacting with the lighting on these massive icons with their mind. So when we came off the Olympics, we were on a high. And we're like, we can do anything we want. Yeah, we just succeeded at the Olympics. And so we went on to try to thought control everything. We made like a thought controlled toaster and which was really stupid. But it was a fun trick and a thought controlled beer tab, which is awesome to have at Christmas parties, but not really useful in real life. You'd focus on it. It would pour. You would relax or clarity. It would stop pouring. We made all sorts of great thought control, things like, you know, trying to grasp. But what is it that we're really going to do with this? And that's when we sort of had that light bulb moment that it wasn't about letting people control the world outside then. It was about the fact that this technology could actually show you what was going on in your own mind and give you real time feedback on your brain. Because as we were teaching people to focus and relax so that they could, you know, make a light bulb go brighter. What we're really doing was taking these internal states that were intangible and making them tangible and visible, showing you when you're focused, showing you when you're relaxed and doing so, essentially giving you BuYeo or neurofeedback to teach your brain and body to do that more. And that's when we kind of had the recognition that this was going to be most useful for the world as a meditation tool, because meditation is this amazing activity that is so powerful for you. But most people don't really know how to do it, and they're not good at it, per say, because you don't know what's going on in your mind. And there's nobody showing you what's going on in your mind and telling you when you're in the right zone and when you're not. And we have technology that could really do that.

[00:13:22] Well, there is a year when I feel like there was a year, it may have been a couple of years or a day, but where Silicon Valley began leading this or Silicon Valley like areas started leading this charge where they had meditation rooms developed in Google, you know, places like that where it felt like it took meditation out of this Eastern philosophy yogi realm and placed it like squarely into like productivity. Corporate America like this is now like a break room moment. And I'm wondering when your device when it switched over into, like, focusing on the meditation and inward movements and recognition moment and how well that paralleled with you think the industry kind of accepting this new form of meditation being just as important for productivity and things like that in the workplace as a break.

[00:14:14] We were so lucky. We completely followed that curve. So, as I mentioned, our first investor in 2012 was Chad Menteng, the guy who literally made Google's meditation program before 2012 when somebody would ask us what we were building. We felt like we had to say it was a cognitive trainer and are really like our early das. Our early pitches all had pictures of brains with like big muscles on them. Going like this is going to make your mind strong. It'll help you focus. And then people would do the demo. And on rare occasions I would be asked, like, is this meditation? And we'd be like, Do you like meditation? Yes, I meditate. I would be like, it is meditation. Just don't tell anyone. I was like, you know, we whispered background conversation. And then over time, I think for us, what I really kind of count is the tipping point was meditation being on the cover of Time magazine. It was around 2013. There was a photo of a woman on the cover of Time magazine, and Tom got in trouble because it was a very, you know, white woman doing this. But she was sitting there with his eyes closed and the lotus position meditating. And that, to me, really marked the moment when the world took notice. And all of a sudden you had big CEOs meditating and athletes meditating and celebrities talking about it. And then the you know, first the kind of vanguard corporate meditators like Google and then the slow trickle of every company having a meditation program that they'd offer to their staff. And we just, by chance, were entirely in tune with that wave and were able to capitalize on it from 2012 moving forward.

[00:15:53] Yeah, that auspicious. Right.

[00:15:56] I mean, I think it would have done well without. But like I said, when you mentioned into cognitive training and things like that, I think that's esoteric and confusing as well. You know, and it's funny when you have to fight against terms like that just to kind of make sure that you're alleviating communication gaps or bigotries. It's fun to kind of look at those things. So now let's get into the device. Let's talk about its structure. I mean, for everyone who's looking to get a picture of it, obviously, if you jump on w choose News.com, you're going gonna get some of that. But if you can kind of describe for everyone listening right now briefly where it sits, what it looks like and how it outlook as an experience as a user. I come to your house. I sit down. We put this thing on me. What's going on?

[00:16:40] So news is basically like a Fitbit for your brain. So it's a slim little headband that sits on your head and it tracks your brain activity during meditation and gives you Real-Time feedback to know when you're focused and when your mind is wandering. So you slip on the news. It would connect to an app on your phone. You'd plug in your headphones. And then as you meditated, you'd be able to hear the sound of your mind through guiding sounds. And the metaphor we use is your mind is like the weather. So when you're thinking or distracted, you hear it as stormy and as you come to quite focused attention, it quiets the storm. So you're getting Real-Time feedback, letting you know when your mind is wandering and killing you back into the meditation zone and then reinforcing you for staying there, reinforcing you to that state of calm.

[00:17:27] Then after the fact, you get data, charts, graphs, scores, things that show you what your brain was doing moment to moment and really help you track the progress of your practice.

[00:17:37] Yeah, it is exactly like a Fitbit, and it's exciting.

[00:17:40] I mean, it it almost just lends to I don't know if it's the human mind or the American human mind or the entrepreneurial mind, but I already when you pitch it that way or when you describe it, I start thinking, oh, I get into training it more. I have areas I want to tap into immediately. It's like this, you know, nice little green pill that I could, like, do something and take and like focus and train or even like a muscle and focus on that. Do you find that people immediately, the people who congregate towards the idea are those that want to tap into certain resources in their brains most quickly? Or is it just the curiosity?

[00:18:17] A people come from both directions. So, you know, people who are performance oriented obviously love the performance aspect of it that you can measure and through measure improving.

[00:18:26] There are people who are very experienced meditators and they come at this more from the perspective of being a consciousness explore, of understanding the process of the mind, of being able to hone the observation of the mind through a new year on their internal state. So there's lots of different experiences that people get out of it. The app is completely customizable, so you can either use the Real-Time feedback during your experience or you can turn off all the feedback and just after the fact, see what your brain was doing through your own silent meditation. We also started with the brain and now have sensors for the heart, the breath and the body so you can hear the sound of your heart like the beating of a drum and be able to track its increases and decreases and really learn your heart's rhythms. You can find stillness in your body and track your movement. There's breath patterns and now there's also hundreds and hundreds of guided meditations that you can use along with the device to actually track your brain, heart, breath and body during your guided meditations as well.

[00:19:29] And are those developed by ever in in collaboration with your company Muse?

[00:19:34] Yeah. So we have dozens of top teachers from all around the world who build meditations for performance, stress, anxiety. We have a cancer collection that males currently testing for finding morning joy for sleep and on and on.

[00:19:50] Nice. What is so I want to you have a topic that you've addressed in the past and I kind of want you to enumerate on for our audience. What is the the mindset of an entrepreneur like it?

[00:20:03] How does that relate to the collection of the data that you've looked at? That's a fascinating question.

[00:20:10] So the mindset of an entrepreneur is different than the mindset of an average individual. And the mindset of an entrepreneur has to be one that A is willing to handle a whole lot of risk and B, is able to have emotional flexibility because being an entrepreneur, you have so many demands on you. And a lot of those are emotional demands. You know, you're you're at the high of success. You're at the low of your business crashing or at the moment before funding. So you need to be able to navigate all those smoothly. And you are typically not afraid in the same ways that other people are afraid that this goes back to the risk piece. So one of the things that I noticed in myself with the mindset of an entrepreneur was that I really believed I would be able to accomplish what ever I wanted. And, you know, occasionally I'd have thoughts that came and come into my mind, like we all do it, like, oh, that's gonna be too hard. You're not good enough. You know, somebody will judge you for it. But I was very easily able to overcome those thoughts. Was variable easily. Is able to say you're just a thought. That doesn't matter. I'm not going to let that hold me back. And I was able to move out into the world without really being held back by a fear that something wouldn't work without being held back by the thoughts in my own mind. I think that's a that's a fundamental feature of entrepreneurs, because the people who aren't entrepreneurs are the people who have a great idea and then just get overwhelmed by the thought of doing it, get bogged down in the feelings that it will work, get held back and not knowing what to do next.

[00:21:47] Yeah. And it doesn't work. We'll just move with it.

[00:21:49] So how would an entrepreneur. Most quickly utilize Muse? What would be, you think, one of the first steps of using it? Is it just articulating areas that they could tap into through meditation?

[00:22:01] Or what do you think, given, you know, the dialog you just created about the entrepreneurial personality and mindset? How would it be most beneficial or collaborated with using Muse right off the bat?

[00:22:14] Sure. So we have literally hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs that use Muse and top CEOs and CEOs will buy them for, you know, their top executives and muse together. So it's it's something that entrepreneurs have really tapped into. So one of the reasons is the idea that the thoughts in your head don't need to govern how you live. So most of us just have the thoughts in our head and we assume that they're supposed to be there, like this isn't gonna work out or I'm not good enough for, you know, this is gonna be too big for me. We just assume that that's the truth, because that's a thought in your head. As an entrepreneur, you learn how to move your mind away from those thoughts and overcome them by taking actions. And that's a big part of what Muse teaches you to do, Muse, cuz you when your thoughts are wandering and then gives you a cue to say, hey, you don't need to follow that thought, you can come back and focus on the thing in front of you.

[00:23:04] You can move your mind away from that and focus instead on something you care about or the task in front of you. So it helps you shift into that mindstate of possibility and lets you move out of your negative thoughts and into a neutral space. And it also significantly increases your productivity because every time your thoughts wander away, that's a little procrastination. That's a micro distraction. With music, get very good at saying like no distraction, back to focus, distraction, back to focus. And then on the emotional piece. What meditation teaches you to do is to ride your emotions without getting bogged down by them. So you might, you know, have just lost a big deal and you might, you know, feel a lot of emotion in your body. And what you learned to do with meditation is to observe that emotion, you know, see the sensations and feel the sensations that it brings in your body without ramping the thought cycle in your head. It's not like, oh, my God, I just lost that deal. Oh, my God, I feel terrible. Whoa, that's really bad. And cycle cycle down with meditation. You. You observe the sensations without getting sucked into the feelings in a way that's going to drag you down with a negative feedback loop between thought, feeling, thought, feeling, thoughts, feeling. So as an entrepreneur, it becomes an incredibly valuable tool to ride through the lows and to let yourself relish the highs.

[00:24:25] And I'm interested about the feedback that it provides through the app and collect collecting that data. What would the average user do with that feedback? Does it help growth? I mean, if you have the cues on obviously there should be some in the moment change and, you know, change of of mental status. But I'm wondering, accumulating that feedback. Do you see how quickly you are able to return to focus and meditation? What what would someone apply the feedback to and what all is collected?

[00:24:57] Sure.

[00:24:58] So when you do a mind meditation, what you're looking at is the times when your mind has wandered in the times and you return and. We celebrate the ability to notice that your mind has wandered and to return back to a place of focused attention and calm.

[00:25:15] We also reinforce and celebrate staying in that calm spot. So it's OK that your mind wanders all of our minds. Do what you want to do. Say like, nope, I'm going to come back to focus. And what you end up seeing over time is a graph that starts looking really jagged. You've got lots of distractions and your mind's bouncing all over the place. And as you progress in your practice, that curve gets smoother and smoother and lower and lower as you're spending more and more time and focus calm. So when you look back to your graphs, you can identify the things that trigger you, the kinds of thoughts that distract you or the sounds that might have been in your environments. You can become very aware of your internal state and you can also really acutely see your progress over time. And you can then also see, you know, OK, this was a great meditation today. What was I doing differently? What what does this mean? How do I reinforced this in the future? Yeah. With the heart meditation you're actually seeing when your heart rate increases and decreases moment by moment and you're learning the things that will get your heart to speed up, things that cause you stress and anxiety and things that get your heart to slow down. And by seeing the patterns of your heart, you learn the kind of relaxation and breathing patterns that get you into optimal HRB and an optimal, beautiful, smooth, sinusoidal rhythm and allow you to relax your body more effectively.

[00:26:33] Right. And when you say that I picture things that I'm more than likely, everyone listening has had glimpses into either the Buddhist monk that was hooked up to electrodes that kept, you know, his heart rate at a certain way, or the deep sea diver who she was, you know, controlling heart rate so that she could dove deeper and things like that. Is that kind of the area that you're headed towards in this kind of lowering of the heart rate or raising it back up? Is it this mind body connection and control?

[00:26:59] Yes. So you learn you learn that mind body connection and that mind body connection is called interception. It's the ability to sensitively understand your internal state. And there's studies that demonstrate that people who have improved interception actually have less stress because you're much more able to sensitively understand where your body is at. Check in on your body.

[00:27:21] And then if you notice stress, tension, increased heart rate, say, hey, I have an exercise that I've learned like a breathing exercise or guided meditation that I know will bring me back to that state of calm. So we start to become master self regulators, noticing where we're at. Having a set of tools to use at that moment, applying them and then shifting into the state that we choose to be in.

[00:27:42] Yeah. I love that. It's perfect master self regulators. You know, that's the call. I think the key right to everything. I'm sure nobody hears that and doesn't think that sounds fantastic. I'm wondering, you you talk a little bit in in some of your the numerous different speaking engagements you've had about how to be empowered in your own mind. And I you know that it's that's a beautiful statement, but it's more a theory than practical, you know, engagement for me. And I'm wondering, since this is kind of tying into that idea of being master over over one's own mind, body relationship, if you can kind of enumerate further on what you feel the empowerment to be empowered in one's own mind looks like in reality, like some of the benefits beyond being able to connect with stress and therefore lower it. You know that the mind body connection. But even further than that, some of the the practicality of what that looks like.

[00:28:41] Sure. So being empowered in your own mind to me means not being at the behest of the crazy thoughts that you consume most of us. Much of the time, you know, most of us just go through our lives with our brain generating a bunch of content in there that often makes us feel unhappy, like we're not good enough. Like things aren't good enough.

[00:29:03] And generally, you know, frustrated, not feeling great. Our brain is constantly telling us that makes us feel things that make us feel a little bit shitty. And frankly, there is no reason for that to be the, you know, existence of your life. There's no reason it needs to be that way. What you learn in meditation is to change your relationship with your thoughts. So rather than being sucked in by them and just listening to all the stuff it tells you and assuming that that's what you need to hear, you actually learn that you can rise above your thoughts. You can create metacognition, you can observe them, and you can make choices about where your brain goes. You can make choices about the contents of your own mind. And when you start to do that, you can now start to orient yourself towards the positive. You can now shut down those negative narratives that weren't serving you. You can now begin to recognize that the narratives that you had about yourself probably aren't true. And you can choose new narratives. It becomes an incredibly. Liberating way to live. And as you start to make better choices about the contents of your own mind, your body follows suit. You start to sort of shut down the negative narratives that keep you small and frustrated. You start opening yourself up to freedom and joy and possibility and the emotional experiences that come with it. And meditation, taking you out of your head and putting you in the present moment really brings an aliveness to your life, to the things that are right in front of you and the things that that are here and real rather than the problems that we worry about that probably will never happen. And so it's it's an incredibly empowered place to be.

[00:30:47] Yeah.

[00:30:48] And when you said, you know, and change the relationship with your own thoughts, a piece of me, I felt like a piece of that was a description or about as rather a piece of a description of happiness, you know, of the human condition to be had to change the relationship with your own thoughts is to change ones that are in disparate nature or causing discomfort. And so to change that back into something, it sounds like a control over one's unhappiness, which is exciting to the human condition.

[00:31:19] You know, across the globe, I think I don't think that's just approaches one particular genre of person, though. I'm sure that there are many that utilize it better than others. But changing the relationship with your own thoughts is is a power that I think a lot of people come to when they start meditation and don't realize that will be one of the benefits.

[00:31:37] You know, it's yeah, it's an extraordinary power. It makes such a difference in your life. You know, most of us are living in self created jails in our own mind, getting caught up in thoughts that truly create our own suffering. And it just doesn't need to be that way.

[00:31:55] Yeah. Who are the clients that that muse has so far reached? You talked about CEOs and people that are really looking at it, as you know. I mean, one of your a jolly good fellow. You know, he's he's brought it up with the Google meditation and stuff like that. But, um, who else do you have industries or populations that have really tapped into being clients? And who do you see it going towards next?

[00:32:18] Sure. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of people that use Muse regularly. And it's from, you know, moms and just awesome everyday people to corporate. So as I mentioned, you know, what CEOs do with their exact we have corporate programs in healthcare. So we have over 200 studies that have been done with Muse, both as a meditation tool and as a clinic. Great. E.g.. So we have a whole hospital systems that have been engaged in testing news. Mayo Clinic has written papers on breast cancer patients awaiting surgery using news. We have thousands of doctors and clinicians that recommend it to their patients. Oh, in an athlete's pro golfers, skaters, footballers, Olympic soccer teams, Olympic swimmers like really quite across the board. So we've we've been we've been very, very lucky that both from just average people who want to learn how to meditate to really top experts. All have been able to find value in the tool.

[00:33:27] Definitely. And I I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be able to find value in it. Even children, you know, young not children, but adolescents and people who are just learning to have that dialog. I think that there's such an opportunity there with young minds that people don't necessarily look at. And to that end. I'm wondering how young the youngest age group that, you know, that studies with Muse have been done on?

[00:33:52] So Muse used to be able to be used for anybody, but now we are GDPR compliant, which is Europe's privacy standard. So we say Muse is not for anybody under 16. Certainly, I've seen no photos of people using Muse of their very young children, though, according to label. It's not not not not till over 16. There have been studies done using Muse in schools. The Denver school board did one. Kansas State University did a study of grade eight students using news, and they saw a 72 percent decrease in kids being sent to the principal's office after using use in their classroom.

[00:34:28] Yeah, and that's kind of what I was suspecting. You know, I think a lot about some of these different ailments that afflict children who tend to be disturbing in the classroom environment or group settings. And it's more just about the therapies applied to social therapies apply to these children are very much so the feedback that it sounds like news would provide. It's about being in touch with the thoughts and reading relationship with the thoughts, which we just clarified. And so that kind of feedback sounds like it will be instrumental. What is there when someone gets on? How much can they explore on your Web site? Like, what are the price points and how does one go about purchasing it? Where at what phase is all of that in?

[00:35:07] So Muse's in market and has been for since 2014. We now have. So we have two devices, Muse two, which gives you real time feedback on your heart, breath, body and brain during meditation. And then we have a new device that we just launched, which is Muse s one of the things that we noticed as people were using Muse before going to bed to help them sleep. And so we now built this beautiful purpose-built device that does all the same things as Muse two. And it also gives you guided meditations and Real-Time feedback in a way that's designed to help you fall asleep faster. So it's a very soft, comfortable band that you were in bed to help you fall asleep. And then we're building more and more sleep features that are going to be released over the next year. So Muse 2, is somewhere around two hundred and fifty bucks. And Muse S is somewhere around 350.

[00:35:59] Nice. So not going to break the bank. You know, I mean, not inexpensive. But for the feedback it's providing and given, can you use one device, I'm assuming for different family members or definitely individuals or does everyone. OK. So you can change application.

[00:36:15] Yes. So we typically see, you know, device. Mom brings the device home, dad starts using it. Kids start meditating. Now you have the whole family using the one device together.

[00:36:24] Absolutely. That's so exciting. I'm wondering to that. And given that you just came out with muse s. What goals does Muse have on the horizon between the next one to three years? And has there been any conversation of application between the global dialog about the pandemic and Muse, or has that kind of been something that it's just obviously addressing within the functionality of the device? Or has the company come out and kind of looked towards efforts as to have a dialog with that?

[00:36:51] Oh, we're definitely dialoging with it. So since the start of the pandemic, we've obviously seen a massive increase in Muse usage, both people purchasing new devices, buying them as gifts, and people who had Muse's really starting to use them very, very regularly. And so we're really looking to how we can build more support and content to help support pandemic specifically. We have a collection of actually free content available to anyone called our S.O.S. Com collection with guided meditations for dealing with uncertainty, working at home, cetera.

[00:37:28] And then we also have monthly challenges that we run with both users and nonusers where you can be guided through a week of support on a particular topic focused around coalbed. So it might be finding peace working from home. Kofman the mind and uncertain times, etc..

[00:37:48] That's fascinating.

[00:37:49] That's a great idea to a monthly challenge, you know, focused around things that are particularly found within it. That's an interesting take on it. I think that a lot of people have tried to get there but haven't quite gotten there with a lot of their business endeavors. Monthly challenges are interesting. And are there any other goals for with the company has that is aside from the covered conversation? Are you guys going to come out with new models? What areas are you reaching further into? I feel like and this might be incredibly naive, but like diet and certain things that are affecting, you know, that the greater health and relationships certainly would be kind of this trickle down effect that would happen when being in conversation with one's own thoughts and their thought relationship. But has there been any movement towards, like diet and exercise or using it, showing people the utility of using it and other major areas of their life?

[00:38:39] So on our podcast that I co-host with Patricia Karpas called Untangle, we approach questions like diet, relationships, etc. every single week with guests in those areas. So, you know, we try. Give you more information around how the brain and the mind work and how to kind of optimize them in relationship to all these topics. And then in our guided content, we also have content specific for different areas, performance, work from home. We've a mindful eating collection. We have lots of relationship collections. So we also try and the guidance to give you new insights, new tools to help with specific areas of your life. And then the thing that we're really diving into now is sleep, because people don't realize how fundamental sleep is and was.

[00:39:28] Sleep has really gotten disrupted. Also, as an entrepreneur, sleep gets disrupted as well because you sit there as you're falling asleep and you can't help but think about all of the problems of the day and the problems of tomorrow and that poor sleep and poor sleep hygiene and poor ability to fall asleep actually depresses your immune system and decreases your emotional self-regulation and cognitive function the next day.

[00:39:51] So for us, we're really looking at how we kind of help people optimize this 24 hour cycle, how you can fall asleep more effectively, stay asleep longer, have more restful sleep, and then be more cognitively and emotionally capable the next day. Do your meditation, you know, enhance them further, sleep well at night and feed forward. Absolutely.

[00:40:13] And it's key. I think Muz asks coming out sounds perfect. I mean, the populations that need sleep most are the ones that always receive it less. It's new parenting entrepreneurs, people making very heavy handed decisions. There was in 2005 a report came out that said the average American president and all of our history got about four hours a night.

[00:40:33] And it was like, no, I need them to get so much more than that. They've got very hands on the button.

[00:40:39] You know, it's a it was just daunting. These. The more important the position, the less sleep. And it was and it was a reverse dialog. It was in conversation to some of the most prolific people that they had discovered in the arts were these people that got massive amounts of sleep. Some of these founders that were coming out saying, I get like nine hours a night and I can't believe anybody wouldn't. And these were the people that were changing the world at the time. And it was this kind of dialog, a back and forth. The article was. But I think it's it's so crucial. Young parents, people like that, Warriors' in all places, you know, don't leave. You have to be the founder of a billion dollar company to be a wildly important individual. And those people in those high stress, high stakes environment are usually not getting sleep. And so I think that feedback is crucial. And I'm glad you brought up your podcast, because I'm wondering, I haven't had the opportunity to dove in and explore more. And so for everyone listening, join me in that endeavor. It's called Untangle. And I really want to climb into a little bit about that experience, how long it's been running. And also, do you bring users of Muse on to have like an actual conversation with a user?

[00:41:48] So the podcast actually started with Patricia Karpas. It was a podcast that she had started building. And when she joined our company as the head of content, I joined as the co-host. And we love doing it because we get to speak to experts, neuroscientists, meditators, top athletes, top artists and unpack the practices in their life that allow them to be effective. And my particular passion is talking to neuroscientists and through with them, unpacking how the brain works and then how we can use that knowledge and understanding the brain to be able to optimize our behavior and our functioning. It turns out that a fair number of the people I interview are users. You know, my my colleagues and peers and in neuroscience and in arts or athletics, they tend to actually also use music. And often I don't even know that.

[00:42:39] I interviewed B.J. Fogger, a top behaviorist, and when he got on the music, oh, my God, you make me use I'm like, oh, my God, you know that I made music crazy. And Dr. Stan Kotkin, he's a top relationship therapist. He was like, I love you. I'm like, oh, my God, you know what news is like? Yes, I use it every day. So it it ends up being kind of serendipitous and typically slightly embarrassing moment for me. I'm sitting here like, what am I supposed to wonder? But it's lovely.

[00:43:06] Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's exciting. I'm glad to know that. And I'm glad to know that you guys kind of interview people who you don't know have used it as well just to garner the information around it without this kind of marketing standpoint. And I look forward to getting on and I look forward to purchasing it because I'm sold. I'm all in. And I practice my station and I have for 10 years based on my spiritual following. So I I'm wholeheartedly looking to jump into this. I think it's important for people to understand that regardless of what you practice and how you do, you can always change your relationship with meditation. You know, there have been people who've meditated for 50 years that are constantly changing their relationship with it. And this device sounds like it could do that and should do that as well. I'm wondering if you can if you can answer our final question on this series is always one of my favorites and it's one that people usually think that they won't be able to answer.

[00:44:01] Perhaps, given that your life has been dedicated to research and and proffering up solutions, you'll be able to more easily than one often thinks. But if someone approached you tomorrow and it's important, we didn't get into it today. But you also have a lot of dialog about women in business. And I do want to ciAriele back around one day and pepper you with that, because that's the platform that we run a lot of our series off. Patricia Kathleen, podcasts. But if you were approached tomorrow by a woman or a female identified a non binary individual, essentially anyone other than a white CIS gendered man. And the person said, listen, I started my career off in this wonderful science and I've I've done a peripheral amount of work there. And I'm thinking about launching this new device, this tech device feedback company. So something remarkably similar, perhaps not identical to what you've done. But she was headed. They were headed that way. And they said, can you give me your top three pieces of advice? What would those top three pieces be?

[00:45:02] Knowing what you know now, sure, that's easy.

[00:45:06] So number one is you don't need to know everything. So I think as a founder or an entrepreneur, it can feel daunting when you start a business because you feel like, OK, well, I need to understand finance. I need in the case of my business, manufacturing, engineering, technology, neuroscience are logistics. There were so many pieces to this puzzle and I really only understood one piece. Got educated and learned myself several of those pieces like fundraising and being the CEO of a company, having ever worked in one myself. And then I was able to attract and hire individuals who knew how to do everything else.

[00:45:44] Experts in their own domain who understood manufacturing in China and logistics and customer care and whatever the role was. So tip number one is you really don't need to know everything. And frankly, there's very few things you do need to know because you can bring on the people that matter to do the job. Yeah. Number two is do not let your own thoughts of not being good enough or not accomplishing enough. Hold you back. We are all amazing capable creatures, but we are held back by the stories in our own mind. You know, the stories that say, oh, you know, we shouldn't take the risk because or people will think this of us or what if it just doesn't work out? And so it's normal for those thoughts to be there. But the person who becomes a successful entrepreneur is the person who is overall to able to overcome those thoughts, who is not held back by them, the person who takes the step and moves forward despite the thoughts and fears in their mind and body. And number three is lead with inspiration. So you may not know most of the things that you need to know to do this. Totally fine. But if you have an inspiring vision and you're able to articulate it and that inspiring vision is going to make the world better in some way, people will want to come along and join you and follow you and work with you and work for you and bring this vision to life together. So the most successful entrepreneurs are those that are able to see a vision that the world needs, that people agree is going to be good for the world and inspire people to come along with them.

[00:47:23] Nice. I love that. So I have. Don't. No one.

[00:47:29] You don't need to know everything. Number two, do not like negative thoughts. Hold you back. And number three, let lead with inspiration and let your vision inspire your audience. And I have to say that, as you said, those things as as silly or interesting as it sounds, I feel like if your device muse could speak, it would say that's exactly what it does. I think so. Yeah. I think that you've you've got the idea in tune and chip with what your craft and your knowledge have all developed in this embodiment of the device. And we are out of time today. But I really want to say I appreciate you taking the time.

[00:48:09] I know everyone is at once available and incredibly busy, you know, during this time of stay at home. And so I want to say thank you so much for all of your knowledge and time today.

[00:48:21] Thank you for the opportunity to share it. Much appreciated.

[00:48:24] Absolutely. And for those of you listening, we've been speaking with Ariel Garten. She's the founder of Muse. You can located at W w w dot Tewes Muse dot com.

[00:48:36] And until we speak again next time, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.