Psychedelic Capital Podcast

Transcript

Ross O’Brien    0:18

Welcome to the Psychedelic Capital Podcast, where we go beyond the headlines in the emerging world of psychedelics and venture capital. Join us for in depth interviews with the leading investors, entrepreneurs, researchers and policymakers who are pioneering a new future in healthcare. I'm your host, Ross O'Brien, founder of venture capital firm Bonaventure Equity, author and lifelong entrepreneur, and I see entrepreneurship everywhere. And as an early investor in this new frontier in life sciences, it is my goal in these conversations to bring you direct access to the thought leaders and pioneers at this defining moment. We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, an addiction crisis. Pain is an epidemic. For the first time now, we have legal pathways to develop psychedelic science and bring a new paradigm of medicine to the patients who need it most. As we imagine this new future, I'm inspired every day by these visionaries that we have the privilege of introducing them to you. So I'm here today with a good friend and colleague, somebody who's really inspired me with his story, Nick Norris. And as with all of these conversations, they are unscripted to go beyond the headlines as we talked about. So I'm going to start things off. First of all, Nick, asking you just to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background.

Nick Norris        1:30

Sure, I'll try to keep it brief. Uh, I'm, um nick Norris. I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, ended up going to the Naval Academy. So I graduated from there in 2003, went to Seal training, commonly known as Basic Underwater Demolition seal training. In 2003, graduated with Class 247, entered the Seal community, and then served on multiple deployments in various leadership roles within the Seal teams from 2003 to 2013 before I left active duty, and then transitioned off active duty, and have been an entrepreneur myself. And I've gone through my own trials and tribulations as a veteran that transitioned into the private sector and I've gone through my own, uh, trials and tribulations in the business world as well. But just really happy to be here today. And I'd say outside of business, I've kind of found myself in a veteran advocacy role, I would call it. Really committed to sharing my story and spreading the message that more veterans and frankly, the world needs to hear about emotional vulnerability, connection and connectedness and destigmatizing mental health and looking at a whole array of modalities that can catalyze that path to wellness.

Ross O’Brien    2:50

Well, I'm excited to share for you to share your story and tell people more about vets an organization that we are really excited about and doing some great work. And as you know, these are unscripted. And one of the things that we like to do is expand our thinking. So we usually kick off the conversation with an oblique strategy. And for those of you who don't know what oblique strategies are, it's a set of cards that was developed by Brian eno music producer. And they are random thoughts to kick off conversation thinking, creativity. And so the random, oblique strategy for our conversation today, Nick, is lost in useless territory.

Nick Norris        3:29

Yeah, useless territory. The way that lands for me, it focuses on useless territory. I personally could tell you that I was lost in useless territory in the frame of mind that I had embraced post transition. Um, my useless territory, I guess, would have been a lack of emotional vulnerability, detachment and disassociation and rationalizing that I was well when I knew that I wasn't totally well. And I think useless territory in that example was probably, uh, a lack of honesty and transparency with myself about my current status. Because I think I was afraid of judgment, and I was afraid to be something that people would judge and to be atypical to what people think a former Seal or veteran should be. So, yeah, totally useless. I've realized that now. I've embraced the latter, the opposite of what I just shared. And it's been formidable in its impact on my life in a very positive way.

Ross O’Brien    4:36

So it's funny because here we are talking about useless territory, and yet it is the most useful part of potentially your story, stories of entrepreneurship. So talk to us a little bit about what that transition period was like. And you're talking about this useless territory of thinking a certain way. Like, is this about vantage point perspective, experiencing new things?

Nick Norris        4:57

I was unaware. Yeah, I think it was a lack of awareness and funny. Uh, enough. As a Seal officer, we praise our ability to be situationally aware, yet in transitioning, off active duty, I probably was situationally unaware of my own state of mind and the kind of actions that I was taking in pursuing work after the military, the way I engaged with my wife and then ultimately my daughter. And, uh, I think I was just unaware. I mean, it's not like I was trying to put myself in a bad situation. I needed an outside perspective from somebody or something that I trusted to really shatter that framework that I was operating in.

Ross O’Brien    5:42

Help us understand what it was like inside that moment.

Nick Norris        5:46

So I had embraced kind of emotional detachment as a Seal in order and, uh, kind of unknowingly embraced emotional detachment. Right. Emotions actually just got in the way. It was better to be pragmatic and kind of close off emotionally, to be able to perform at a high level in a high stress environment. And when I got out, that's a.

Ross O’Brien    6:08

Skill set that you need to learn in order to be at, uh, your best in that environment.

Nick Norris        6:11

Totally. And didn't even know that I was learning that skill set. I was just doing right. I was just being a good Seal and being a good leader. And I think you're just a product of your environment. So the environment that I was in was one that did not praise or appreciate emotion, uh, because emotion, emotion makes you slower to actually act and make decisions in situations where you cannot take a bunch of time to figure out what you're going to do next. And when you're in a situation where people are being wounded or killed or they're the high potential of that situation unfolding, you, uh, have to be able to kind of put your emotions aside and make decisions that are going to progress the progress what is going on around you in a positive direction as opposed to getting bogged down in emotion. And if you got bogged down in emotion in a very high stake scenario, it would lead to people getting killed.

Ross O’Brien    7:10

Uh, is that an assessment of risk in that moment and then risk mitigation?

Nick Norris        7:14

Yeah, but it happens super-fast. Right? I think Doolittle talks about the UDA loop in Naval aviator, famous Navy aviator, where he has a loop of orienting, deciding, assessing, and then taking action, and then doing that in a very quick manner in order to kind of risk mitigate and then make a decision quickly and then, uh, figure out where. Because the situation in a combat environment is so dynamic that you have to go through that kind of risk mitigation cycle so fast to be able to make decisions because the environment has changed. 5 seconds later, the environment could have changed and and completely obliterated logically what would have been a good decision 5 seconds prior to that.

Ross O’Brien    7:55

So I love this quote and I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy. What it sounds like is to me and um, learning from you in this conversation, in order to be able to succeed with that kind of unknown high risk, there's no planning you can do. Once the action starts, the mission starts. It sounds like you have to develop yourself in an unnatural way in order to perform at the highest level with those stakes that are so high. Right?

Nick Norris        8:24

Yep, yep, absolutely. Yeah. You have to you're mandated to perform at the highest level, m and I'll come back to UDA or observe, orient aside, act.

Ross O’Brien    8:34

Right.

Nick Norris        8:34

So um, I'm proper in kind of giving you the acronym, but yeah, no, you have to there's no room for slow, methodical decision making in a dynamic environment. It's important to risk mitigate and do that well, but the speed that it happens changes depending on the situation that you're in and the environment that you're placed in.

Ross O’Brien    8:58

So we're going to get to the psychedelics part of the conversation, but I think it's really important for people to understand where you're coming from in your journey. Right. So we're at the point where now you're moving out of your service life, right. Mhm. And it sounds to me like this is a new environment where you're readapting right. Is this where this challenge was self awareness and things was most evident?

Nick Norris        9:24

Yeah, I think I was trying to apply the same kind of emotional detachment and kind of just aggressive pursuit of achievement when I left the military, which magically that makes sense, right? Yeah. It worked in this career. I'm going to make it work in this follow on career. So I just hammered away, I entered the workforce, decided that I was going to, I think, set a goal of being successful, whatever that is. Maybe that at the moment, it was just like, I want to make a lot of money so I can take care of my family and make sure that we're stable. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that's their goal, right. Whether they want to admit it or not, is like, I want to be successful. I want to achieve. And that usually means earning more to be able to take care of yourself and others around you. So I kind of poured myself into that. And I think, um, unknowingly, that was kind of a coping mechanism for me to just deal with the fact that I have all this emotional suppression going on. I never dealt with the death of friends and family appropriately. Right. I gave myself, like, a day to mourn, and then I was locking it away and moving on and being pragmatic. So moving into the private sector, I just poured myself into work to the detriment of kind of relationships around me. The relationship the relationship with my wife, ultimately the relationship with my daughter who came along.

Ross O’Brien    10:44

So ironically, you're doing all this for totally.

Nick Norris        10:46

Well, and I would actually say that I would rationalize probably, uh, to my wife when she would approach me about, hey, you're different. Maybe I'm worried about you. We're not happy. There's things going wrong or things that are just unsettled in our relationship.

Ross O’Brien    11:03

Sure.

Nick Norris        11:04

And in my rationalizing, my response would be, well, I'm doing this. And we actually come across as kind of like frustration or edginess and maybe anger in a way. Like, I'm doing this for us, uh, for you. And I was trying to fool myself. I believe that I'm just trying to do this, and I'm trying to do what I've been doing all along, is just perform and achieve. And I think in doing that, I was just perpetuating kind of this cycle of suppressing my emotions, um, because I knew that that hasn't led to success in the past and I figured it's going to lead to success or continue to success. But you can only do that so.

Ross O’Brien    11:43

Long before key element of your operating system at that point.

Nick Norris        11:47

Totally. You can only do it for so long before not addressing emotions

Nick Norris        11:54

starts to overwhelm you and it starts to manifest kind of physically and it becomes more of a surface level thing. And for me, I framed my conversation with my wife as probably laced in edginess and frustration. And that's how some of this started to manifest for me when I actually started to be semi aware that there was something that I needed to address and I wasn't healthy and I wasn't happy. But it would come across as edginess frustration with people, anger, where I'm typically not an angry person. And then ultimately apathy, which is the scariest thing to have happen. People would think that anger sadness would be anger or sadness would be like, the thing that you want to avoid, right, in depression or anxiety. But for me, it was just apathy. It was just what did that look like? Just a lack of

Nick Norris        12:45

lackluster willingness to just participate in life, to do the things that drove happiness in my life, connect with people that I, um, love. Probably distance myself from people. Not purposefully, but just like, it just happened. I just didn't want to be around people, and I didn't want to do things that typically would bring joy to my life. I mean, climbing would be, like, a very simple example. I mean, I've always enjoyed climbing. I still enjoy climbing bouldering. And I just stopped in physical exercise. In general, I had to really force myself. I was just forcing myself to kind of go through the motions. But I just lost this fire, this passion to pursue things that I normally would find a lot of joy in.

Ross O’Brien    13:33

When I'm hearing you describe this, I'm, um, seeing some similarities in my own life. Much different. Right. And I'm sure that there's a lot of common experiences that you're sharing. And look, this is one of the great things about talking to Nick is your willingness to be so open about this. Because I'm sure there's people listening that haven't found yet that moment of self awareness. To be able to look in the mirror or look at their situation or look and step back and say, well, wait a minute. How do you find yourself in that? What was it for you? Was there certain experiences or things that were compelling you to step out of yourself in that moment?

Nick Norris        14:09

The fact that I wasn't finding joy in life scared me. It was just terrifying. And I think I was left

Nick Norris        14:19

feeling almost helpless. I'm trying so hard to fix this issue, but I can't figure out how to fix it. I don't have a clear path. I don't understand what, uh, tools I can use to actually change. So I felt lost. I'm not someone that felt lost. I always had a plan. I had goals. I knew what tools I needed to achieve those goals, uh, and to feel like I was kind of helpless in that capacity to enact change was really scary. So I think that was catalytic for me. And I remember opening up to my wife when she was away, just getting on a phone call and just letting her know that, like, I'm like, I'm not doing I'm not doing good, and I need to figure something out. And my first stop was to go to a Western classically trained physician sure. And just explaining what I'm going through. And they looked at it as like, well, this is like a clinical depressive episode. Like, you're just depressed.

Ross O’Brien    15:21

Right.

Nick Norris        15:21

Uh, and that was confusing to me because that wasn't necessarily sad that I was just not feeling,

Nick Norris        15:28

period. And the solution that they presented was prescribing an antidepressant, which I've said this on multiple podcasts in various interviews, like, not demonizing antidepressants. There's a place for that drug. And I know it's helped a tremendous number of people, but for me,

Nick Norris        15:53

I didn't want to take something as a Band Aid fix to something that was a deeper issue that came from just talking to other friends that had maybe poor experiences with antidepressants, where they just felt numb. Right. It kind of took away maybe it took away some of the sadness or the anger or the apathy, but they just didn't feel there was still that detachment. And the apathy is what scared me. So if I was going to just take something that was potentially that going it's to keep me flat, I just didn't want that. And that was my sovereign decision. And I knew that, okay, if I'm not going to do this, I need to figure something else out.

Ross O’Brien    16:30

Right.

Nick Norris        16:30

And I think in the moment, that physician actually recommended therapy, because I had never done therapy, even like talk therapy, never done talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Uh, and that was exactly what was recommended. And I, uh, never made the appointment. Uh, so I'm going to hold myself accountable, because if that physician is ever listening to be like, I told you so, and I'd be like, well, yeah, you were right. Trust me. Years later, I am one of the biggest advocates of talk therapy, but avoided that. And I went down the path of just trying to problem solve myself. I spoke openly about transcranial magnetic simulation when I interviewed with Tim Ferris. It's a tool that I utilized for.

Ross O’Brien    17:09

Those who may not be familiar.

Nick Norris        17:10

So they are using and I think it's off label use, or maybe it's on label, on frontal lobe use for using neurostar as one manufacturer of this magnet. And it's using a magnet to create kind of magnetic pulses to stimulate brainwave activity. So if it's depressed, kind of picking it up, if it's over active, depressing it.

Ross O’Brien    17:31

And was that your, uh, first exploration outside of the prescribed medications?

Nick Norris        17:36

It was it was my alternative.

Ross O’Brien    17:39

Alternative?

Nick Norris        17:39

Yeah. I had heard about veterans and other friends of mine had gone through that, and it had been helpful. And I would say the first time I went through it, it was helpful, but it faded in time. Uh, and I went back six months later, and the second time wasn't as effective. It actually caused some agitation, and I just didn't feel like I was getting the results that I was hoping for. So in essence, it was a bandaid fix in a different way, but very similar to what I like into an antidepressant. And at that point, I actually started to feel pretty destitute, right. Because I'm trying to problem solve. I'm finding something that's providing relief and then it's not providing relief anymore. So I'm like, where do I go from here? And life just takes you down paths that

Nick Norris        18:27

you may have never expected to be going down a certain path. And uh, this kind of frames my story. But that path that you were walked down, it happened for a reason. And for me, that manifested in just crossing paths with former Seals that I knew from the community that had explored psychedelics in a controlled, well curated, supervised environment to be a solution to some of the same symptoms that I've described. The anger, the edginess, the apathy. And uh, they had tremendous results and I could see the results in interacting with them because I knew them. Right. I had interacted with these guys on active duty and the uh, people I was interacting with were different people. Much happier people, more content and more savvy.

Ross O’Brien    19:17

How are you finding each other? Is this still fairly on the fringe kind of stuff? Like nobody's putting up a website saying, hey, here's the database?

Nick Norris        19:24

No, I mean, that's why I said it. Sometimes you walk paths that you weren't expecting to walk. I mean, it was just casual interaction. It was like unexpected random interaction with guys that I had crossed paths with years ago. But then all of a sudden I'm at a trade show and we're hanging out in a booth and the guy works for a new company and he's talking to me and he just feels compelled to share. Uh, uh, I'm sure people that have actually had a peak experience with a psychedelic, i, uh, mean, would understand this. You kind of feel it can be so pivotal and catalytic in a positive way that you feel compelled to share. Right? You become evangelical afterwards. There's actually, actually, in its advice that Tim had given me is like everybody, after your first big experience, you're going to want to tell everybody, you're going to want grandma to do psychedelics, right? But you have to kind of temper your enthusiasm and allow it to kind of settle in because the hard work really comes afterwards. It's integrating that experience and then it's getting on the path of just simple, effective routines day in, day out.

Ross O’Brien    20:29

But for those who are tracking here to the narrative, and I really appreciate you going through this sort of step by step, uh, and I've seen this in other elements and certainly seen in my own life in certain respects. You're asking for help. Mhm you're proactively, you have the awareness to understand that something's not right and you've kind of hit the limit of what you can tolerate in your life. So those decisions put you on a completely different orientation and open up your aperture to experiencing life in a different way. You may not be feeling relief at that moment, but it doesn't surprise me that when you take that reorientation to going about the next day and the next day and the next day that you are going to collide with some of these people that are having these experiences.

Nick Norris        21:11

Yeah, it's bound to happen. The, uh, hardest part for people is to just gain that initial awareness, right, that something is wrong or I need to enact change in my life because I think the people that I know that have struggled the most or continue to struggle are just kind of caught in that situation where they're oblivious to it. Right. They don't realize that they are suffering as much as they are because it doesn't give them the opportunity to start to seek any type of change.

Ross O’Brien    21:43

So I think this is a really good point to pause for a moment and talk about vets in the organization, how people can find you somebody's listening to this and they want to learn more, they need to find your organization. Maybe let's take a moment and talk about that and what you guys are doing.

Nick Norris        21:58

Yeah. So veterans exploring treatment solutions. Vetsolutions.org is a nonprofit that was founded by my good friend Marcus Capone and his wife, Amber Capone, basically to provide access to well monitored, well curated psychedelic experiences in countries where they're legal for veterans, and specifically special operations veterans, combat veterans that are struggling. And the organization really started in a very grassroots fashion. It's been four or five years, maybe longer, but they've been kind of in the underground, kind of making sure that guys have access to grants to be able to get to go on a retreat. And a majority of the guys and Vets doesn't kind of limit themselves or the people that seek help through Vets to a specific psychedelic. But Ibogaine and Five Emo Dmt in a retreat setting have been very prolific for a majority of the patients and the veterans that have come through. But a big part of the organization is really focused on research and political advocacy because knowing that the organization can only help so many people, they had to be very narrow in their focus to help special operations combat veterans only because you need to start someplace. But, uh, through political advocacy and commitment to research in partnership with organizations like Stanford and Johns Hopkins, you're able potentially to enact change for a bigger subset of the population. So the organization has really invested a lot of time and energy into that part of the mission in order to hopefully expedite these modalities being available medically and legally in the United States so, uh, people don't have to leave this country to go seek healing via a psychedelic experience. But yeah, tremendous work is being done and they've helped hundreds, if not approaching 1000 plus veterans, and frankly, a lot of the veterans that have gone through either dealing with severe addiction, depression, anxiety, you can frame it however you want. MTDI plays a part in this concussive injury, chronic sleep deprivation and exposure to stress, and then a large number of suicidal ideations. I'd probably say 40 plus percent of the patient population is in that category. And maybe it's even higher. Maybe that the 60% that it doesn't apply to. Just weren't ready to share that they've gotten to that low point. But, uh, yeah, they're doing tremendous work. I'm so very thankful for the organization and the work that the components are doing.

Ross O’Brien    24:32

That's, uh, really important stuff. And great to hear your story and your involvement with this. Maybe let's talk a little bit about your initial experiences with psychedelics and sort of the before and after and some of the things that you discovered through that process.

Nick Norris        24:47

Sure. And I won't ruin taint anybody's potential experience. If there's anybody out there that is planning on experiencing either Ibogaine or five Meo, but I can tell you that I never used a psychedelic medicine prior to being introduced to it via vets in that environment is pretty miraculous. I mean, my use of five meo, Dmt and Ibogaine transformed me back into the person that I was prior to military service. And I know that because my wife, who I've been with since high school, is the one that gave me that feedback. After I came back from having my big experience with Ibogaine, she literally told me that it had I mean, in essence, it had kind of decalcified my heart and it kind of turned the clock back to the kind of person that I always was. And I think we all are. We're all loving, caring, empathetic warm beans, and we go through life right. And experiences in life and situations and trauma or whatever.

Ross O’Brien    25:59

That's a great way to describe it.

Nick Norris        26:01

Yeah, it removed the calcification.

Ross O’Brien    26:04

Huh.

Nick Norris        26:05

It just kind of brought me back to that kind of uncalcified or close to uncalcified version of myself that I was when we first started dating. And I thought that was a really powerful testimonial because it's really hard to explain the experience, and the experience is beyond language. And there's a very deep psychospiritual part of this. I could go into kind of a strength and belief in a higher power. And you can call that higher power god love for the one.

Nick Norris        26:36

I think for the first time in my life, I actually felt like I had a relationship with something bigger than myself.

Ross O’Brien    26:44

That's profound.

Nick Norris        26:46

Yeah, I get emotional talking about it because I truly

Nick Norris        26:53

I think I had a sense of knowing after these experiences that I really never I mean, I could have said, yeah, I believe in God. I professed to this faith whenever I read this holy Scripture, and I know stories from it, but I didn't feel like I had a relationship, and I felt something that is ineffable that galvanized a relationship and something bigger than me, and it kind of reprioritized my life and put things front and center that are just important. Namely, like, my kids in my life, they're a manifestation of pure love and goodness and innocence and kind of that powerful love that I feel for them. There's nothing more important in my life than that. Uh, it's actually silly. I still laugh at myself. Like, how stupid could I have been to be so distracted with all this other stuff in the none of it matters. None of it matters, like, materialistic or any concerns and what's going on in business or turmoil in your life. None of it matters. It distills. It down the experience distilled. It down to an intense focus on the thing or things that truly do matter. And that's changed me. It's a changed the way that I approach my life, the way I interact with people, where I put my energy, where I spend time. And, uh, I mean, that's, like, one of the most profound things that come out of it. And granted, you can look at kind of the more pragmatic for those people out there that are looking. I mean, granted, the science is a big part of this now, right? And trying to get these things through FDA trials and get them to medical legalization, there's pretty profound physical healing benefits that are happening, right? I mean, there's major studies going on with a whole litany of psychedelic compounds, uh, with Ibogaine specifically. I haven't drank. Really. I tried after I came back from taking Ibogaine, and I just had zero desire or craving for it anymore. And I would say maybe I wasn't, like, I didn't frame myself as, like, an alcoholic, but I was habitually drinking unknowingly, tried drinking to numb just stress and issues in my life. I came back from this thing completely obliterated all craving for alcohol, and it's given me clarity of thought and mind, and I'm very thankful for that. It also feels like it was like a reset to my central nervous system.

Nick Norris        29:22

There was physical things that changed in my body, like, just kind of functionality in my elbows or my hands that I thought I had lost. From a dexterity standpoint, I'm not an MD, but

Nick Norris        29:37

there was a physical difference in just physically how I felt and performed as an athlete afterwards. Yeah. And I think a lot of the research is looking at kind of the neuro anti inflammatory benefits of a compound like Ibogaine and Nor. Ibogaine is the is what Ibogaine is metabolized into and how it impacts inflammation in the brain. And when we look at mild traumatic brain injury, whether it comes from impact, concussive impact, or concussion from blast, or just chronic exposure to high stress and disrupted sleep patterns, you're basically inflaming the brain. And when we look at inflammation in our joints, our shoulder. Or knee. We take Ibuprofen. We.

Ross O’Brien    30:18

Icin masks.

Nick Norris        30:19

We do all this stuff. We never do anything about inflammation in the brain because we can't see it. Right. Maybe it's manifesting in kind of emotional vulnerable, different emotional issues. Right. Anger, frustration, maybe headaches, inability to have kind of clarity of thought.

Ross O’Brien    30:34

Uh huh.

Nick Norris        30:35

But we never address it. And I think that there's really profound possibilities in kind of using some of these modalities to reduce that inflammation. And that's probably a big part of what's going on. The subset of special operations guys that are taking Ibogaine and seeing such profound benefits sure, there's the psychospiritual component of the experience is a big deal, but I think it's also kind of reducing inflammation, the physiology of it and the physiology. And so there's actually real science that's being the compounds are being researched in that capacity to see how maybe these things are they're stimulating neurogenesis and release of brain derived neurogrowth factor and just reducing the inflammation in that environment to allow the brain to heal.

Ross O’Brien    31:21

Itself. Look, I think it's such an exciting moment in time right. Where the research is now open, available. One of the things that we're seeing is the quality of researchers that are gravitating to the science because it's so compelling. And I think we're just at the start of a, uh, complete new paradigm in not only the research, but how we're handling the biggest issues in health care.

Nick Norris        31:45

Right.

Ross O’Brien    31:46

Totally. It's really an exciting moment. It makes me think about there's really two groups of people that we really engage with a lot and learn a lot from it's veterans and former professional athletes. We have a number of athletes on our team, if you've met, and really great guys and girls. So one of the things that we talk about a lot with them and I'd like to have this conversation with you, is having these experiences like professional athletics, military service, and then translating that to entrepreneurship. Right. So I want to kind of come back to that point in your story where you're now a civilian and you're building a successful career. You've got goals in mind, you want to support your family. There's the stuff that we talked about that doesn't matter, but it does. I'd like to hear your experience and where these similarities fit in your entrepreneurial endeavors.

Nick Norris        32:38

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is my ability to be a good teammate. I think that's what you learn whether you're in the military or you're an athlete, it's how do you take your skills and be a contributing member to something that's bigger than you right. And have complementary relationships with those other people on your team to be able to achieve greatness. And you do that in the military, it's like no brainer. Right. You have to everybody has their job. They have their role. Uh, and they perform. Their only focus is to perform extremely well in that role. So the team as a whole is going to excel. And when I left the military, I think that's been one of my biggest strengths, is knowing my strengths, knowing my weaknesses, and understanding how I can complement my weaknesses with somebody else's strengths. Mhm and how my strengths can complement their

Nick Norris        33:29

weaknesses. That's the magic to like a successful team, right. High performing teams. It's just not a bunch of people that are all good at everything that doesn't happen. You need deep expertise in every single area, and you need people that are not just experts in their particular niche, but are willing to understand and kind of work with somebody else to kind of learn something new and help people grow that might be weak in that environment or in that particular niche. I think that's one of the biggest things that I took away from the military. And then I think the other thing that you can label this as, either it might be a fault in some situations, but as much as I started to drift towards it being a fault, I think I've now come full circle. The loyalty that I have, I think it's a rarity in this world to find people that are truly loyal, especially in a work environment. Interesting people switch jobs constantly. You don't know if you're going to get true loyalty, you're going to get true commitment from somebody. In the military, I was very focused on being committed and being loyal. And when I look at somebody in the eye and I shake their hand or I tell them that, hey, I'm your teammate or I'm part of this unit, you're going to get everything from me, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm here to kind of drive forward and I want to make, uh, a true commitment to somebody. And I've taken that loyalty and I've used it in the outside world. And you got to be careful at times. Right. Because for sure, some people aren't. Maybe they don't have the best intentions and they'll abuse that loyalty, but it's not something that I'm going to give up on. And I tell that to people that have transitioned them. Don't lose that ability to commit and to be loyal, because loyalty is a truly unique and valuable characteristic.

Ross O’Brien    35:19

I think this is super interesting because do you find it certainly I would say from our vantage point, that translates to resilience. Right. And when you have a commitment to something for the long term and have resilience, the first time something doesn't go well because it will. Everything goes it never goes back to our comment about first contact.

Nick Norris        35:40

Right?

Ross O’Brien    35:41

Yes. The first time something doesn't go well, if you just pull the record and you're quick to, uh, not have that sort of loyalty to the long term objectives, that doesn't look like resilience to me.

Nick Norris        35:52

Right. No, you have to be resilient and, uh, being committed to something, I mean, that's people in the military or athletes doing very difficult things to achieve things that are very lofty as far as goals are concerned. So you have to be resilient. And I think along with the resilience, a deep sense of humility is something I mean, humility is one of the outside of loyalty and humility is like one of the most important things that I fostered as a leader in the Seal teams. I wanted to always carry myself with humility. Easy to do in the Seal teams because there's so many amazing human beings that I respect that were better at me than so many different things. But to be able to carry yourself with humility in an environment where things are going to go wrong, especially as an entrepreneur, right? Things go wrong all the time. You're constantly being dealt situations, you're being disappointed. And to be resilient, to keep going is one part of it. But then you also should be humble enough to recognize where you've made mistakes. How did the situation go wrong? What could we have done better? Who could I have brought into the fold to help advise me or help us move through this negative experience faster, ah. And then get back on our feet and then move towards that ultimate lofty goal again?

Ross O’Brien    37:10

I think it was Jalen Hurt said, we're just doing this right after the Super Bowl, the quarterback for the Eagles, and they lost. Right. And I think the quote was that Ah blew me away that asked him about the game afterwards and he says, well, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Totally. I'm like, that is it.

Nick Norris        37:26

And you learn and you learned from negative experience. Yeah, like, I've said this over and over again. I mean, people always want to know about like, oh, what do you do right? In the military? I can tell you what I did wrong. Those are the experiences in life, whether it's the military and business. I know the experiences that were difficult, where I made mistakes and things turned out to be terrible for a period of time. I mean, those are etched in my brain.

Nick Norris        37:56

Uh, I think that's just how our brain is. That's how we wire. We remember those painful experiences. It's a great opportunity to learn from them, to dissect those experiences and then grow from them. So without pain, growth doesn't exist and.

Ross O’Brien    38:11

Humility can't it fosters humility?

Nick Norris        38:13

I think you have to be humble. I mean, to dissect a situation where you really messed something up and led to some terrible situation, you have to be a humble person. Because if you're not carrying yourself with humility and egos overriding everything, you're going to be too proud to even hold yourself accountable and too proud to even like, regurgitate that terrible decision and share it with somebody and let other people.

Ross O’Brien    38:38

Sure, you're self fulfilling a bias that's not going to allow you to evaluate mistakes. If you think you didn't make any mistakes. Absolutely. Then you continue to make the mistakes and ironically, it inhibits your success. Yeah. So let's talk about success, because you said something earlier as well in your story about having a vision of success in your mind. And I think this is a really important thing for entrepreneurs and just in life, right. In general. I working with a therapist, went through talking about what success means to me. Right. And absolutely, I'm one of those people was very ambitious early on. I started my first business when I was 19 and had just a string of failures. And I had always sort of looked at the scoreboard or visualized a scoreboard in my mind that would have a bank account, a house, fancy cars, whatever, right. None of that matters. And I, um, personally had this epiphany on success a few years ago, which I now define as being able to do this for as long as I can. This being invest in dynamic entrepreneurs, help fund research, science, pioneer true solutions for healthcare's biggest needs. And as long as I can do that for the rest of my days, there's nothing that would trump that that I could accomplish. So I'd love to hear from you how success was defined for you early on, how you define it now and how this narrative has informed it. Yeah.

Nick Norris        40:06

So I think early on it was achieving goals, right? Like setting lofty goals and achieving goals, just knocking them

Nick Norris        40:15

down. That's great. Probably is the reason I kind of achieved a bunch of the stuff that I achieved, but now and I'm still achieving things. Right. It's not like I just lay down and I'm just like, uh, whatever happens, happens. So I don't want to frame this inappropriately, but success for me is being connected genuinely with people that I love and they feel the same way about me. So it's this shared love and respect and connection transcends not just my personal life, it transcends that and it bleeds into my professional life. So choosing m people that I work with, whether it be a business partner, a client, a, uh, consultant, somebody that is like a supporting Echelon company that's helping me do whatever we're doing as a company, making sure that the relationship is real and that there's somebody that cares about me and I want to care about them. It doesn't have to happen with everybody. I'm not completely an altruist in that every single person has to be like your best friend and you have to care about them deeply and all that. But it is important for those core relationships, professional or business, um, to have deep connection. Emotional vulnerability should exist there. People should be unafraid to kind of share deeply with you. And not that you're going to have a therapy session with your business partners all the time, but it's the only thing that really galvanizes trust. I firmly believe that and I put it into practice the business partners that I have, I trust them deeply, I consider them friends, and probably more so, I consider them family. And I know that they have my best intentions at heart. And that materialism comes second, and the relationship comes first, and doing the right thing and being principled in kind of how we conduct ourselves comes first. And if I have those type of relationships, I think it just like it leads to success. It leads to success in the latter.

Ross O’Brien    42:25

Where you're a symptom, not an objective.

Nick Norris        42:28

It's a symptom of choosing the right people and carrying yourself behaviorally in that construct.

Ross O’Brien    42:34

So what stands out for me in this moment is thinking about, again, learning from you, and overlaying some of my own trajectory and seeing some of the common threads. I had a string of years of bad partners, employees, bad investments. We all make bad investments. And without question today, it's all about the alignment of morals, values, objectives. But it's funny when I look back at those people mistakes, there was also a period in my life where I wasn't caring for myself right? I wasn't treating myself in the way I wanted to be treated or treat other people. And I always used to say, oh, one of my favorite characteristics and people is authenticity. All that was me saying, oh, I think I'm an authentic person. And I was self medicating and doing stuff that was completely inhibiting my ability to open my aperture and see the value that I could bring and others could bring. And then it becomes mutual value.

Nick Norris        43:38

Totally. Yeah, you can if you don't take care of yourself, you're patient one. You need to be focused on yourself, because how can I expect emotional vulnerability and connection from somebody else if I'm unwilling to be emotionally vulnerable? It's like the most magic thing. If you bring vulnerability into a situation, it typically be gets vulnerability, or you find out that somebody's not ready for that, and there's nothing wrong with that for sure. But then you understand, that's kind of where I can gauge maybe, uh, it's not the right time to invest that much energy and try to push that person, because you can't change people, and you can't force people to give you that level of vulnerability and connection. They have to do it on their own.

Ross O’Brien    44:24

But the vulnerability also, I think, allows you to have the difficult conversations which you were just talking about. And if I look back sort of again, just personalizing like 100% of the time when I avoided a difficult conversation, there was a worse

Ross O’Brien    44:42

outcome if I was willing to take off that band aid and be secure in myself, regardless of the outcome. Everybody benefits from those tough conversations, even if it's look at every entrepreneur. Part of the job is you hire and fire and you put resources together, and you build teams, and then things fail, and then you reiterate and things fail. Again, you reiterate and you say and it's never easy to do that. You always have to have the personal thoughtfulness of another person if you are no longer going to have them on the team, for example. But delaying that decision, not being honest about that decision and not tackling it head on always, in my experience, made the situation worse, not better.

Nick Norris        45:23

I agree. And it's never easy, right? It's never easy to kind of look somebody in the eye and tell them something that they don't want to hear. But when they do hear it and you approach it in that way, nine times out of ten it turns into a healthy conversation. Uh, people appreciate it, right? At least you're not hiding something from them. You're not trying to like, sugarcoat it. You're not telling them something that isn't true and not allowing them to grow. Because if I'm failing, I would rather have somebody tell me, like, why am I failing and let me try to fix it for sure. And even if I'm being let go, right, or m something, a partnership is ending. At least I can figure out, okay, you know what, this is over, right? We're not going to be partners, I'm not going to be an employee anymore. But I can figure out kind of what went wrong and just work really hard not to, not to let it happen again. And by having that open conversation, I would say that you're gaining an ally and somebody that's going to vouch for you.

Ross O’Brien    46:18

I'm just thinking about that 100%. Uh, it's having that awareness. Humility. I'm just thinking through like we've been hitting on these topics in the whole conversation, right. And coming to mind are several of my partners and investors here today. And there's a group of lifeline, we're talking decade plus relationships and we've been in stuff together that didn't go well. Mhm, right. And it's funny, like, to have some partners that you lose money together sometimes that galvanizes a collected learning and a collective vision and then when the next thing does become bigger and better, you can lean in even more. It becomes sort of the price of admission.

Nick Norris        47:00

Yeah. It's the only way to go now. Right. Hiding anything from somebody doesn't do you any good.

Ross O’Brien    47:05

Yeah, we talk about that in Diligence. When we look at companies, I would rather find out like every company has components to it that are imperfect. Right. I mean, we invest in startups and see companies. This is the honor.

Nick Norris        47:18

Most of them.

Ross O’Brien    47:21

Fail. Look, if we are really good at what we do, a, uh, third of our companies are not going to survive. And we're going at this with real capital, real resources. We think a smart team, great founders, like, that's just how the deck is stacked. Sure. Right. But I think about and I always say this sort of indulgence, I would rather you tell me, hey, look, here is something that happened. And here's what we want to put on the table. Because if I go and find it out on my own, then it raises more questions in terms of how we're building a relationship.

Nick Norris        47:52

Well, trust is eroded immediately. If somebody has to find something out. It could be something big, it could be something small. But if it's left unsaid, you've eroded trust. And trust is important. I mean, that's the only thing that you have, huh? Right. If you're going to go to battle, uh, as an entrepreneur or wherever, you need to know everything. Like, you want to be able to trust the other people and have them tell you the hard things when you don't want to hear them because it's going to make you better and it's going to make the company more successful.

Ross O’Brien    48:25

I love this because it goes back to what you were saying about not everyone can be good at everything too. And in great teams, if you can trust an individual in their lane to do the best that they can, regardless of what the outcome is. I mean, we talk a lot about this is a concept. I love that if the systems are sound and if the process is sound, so I said, a handful of our investments are not going to win. Right. But if we look back and say our process was sound and we went into it eyes wide open and we can't fault the systems, then the outcome is the outcome. Right. And that's staying in your lane, but also collaborating and being part of a broader team. Yeah.

Nick Norris        49:06

No, I totally agree.

Ross O’Brien    49:09

So we're in violent agreement, uh, which doesn't surprise me. Look, man, this has been such an amazing conversation. We're going to have to do this again. We're just scratching the surf to bring it back to psychedelics capital, right. Which is what we're talking about. What do you see happening? We're here at the beginning of 2023. We're at a watershed moment. How do you and your organization, you personally look at the next two, three, five years and where should we be investing our time, our money, our philanthropy? Where should regulatory momentum be going? Just so there's some broad strokes that you're excited about.

Nick Norris        49:44

Yeah, so for me, it's always been about the preparation and integration. So I think it's the supporting effort movements that are kind of complementary to the psychedelic experience or the psychedelic compound. I think that is where a tremendous amount of growth is going to happen. And it needs to happen because so.

Ross O’Brien    50:03

Things like clinics set and setting, talk.

Nick Norris        50:05

Therapy, I think it's making sure that there's the right integrative support. So like the talk therapy, having the right therapists and coaches. And maybe it isn't just always a PhD or a, uh, licensed therapist that's there, but it's kind of growing kind of these therapist light type roles.

Ross O’Brien    50:22

Uh, but I mean, these are powerful molecules, right? Like this is not to be taken lightly.

Nick Norris        50:27

Yeah, I think so. Being able to build networks of trusted support personnel to be able to ensure that people are actually able to capture the power of these experiences and enact change in their lives. That's probably the biggest, the most important part of it having these people uh, to catch you on the back end and be able to and it's not just sitting with you during the experience, it's the people that you can go to afterwards to really unwind and kind of analyze the experience. And then again, uh, I'm all about fundamentals so it's establishing those healthy habits long term that are really going to change kind of the life that you're living. So whether that's kind of picking up a contemplative practice, whether it's meditation, uh, or prayer, committing to kind of talking to people, whether that's a therapist or a coach or just uh, kind of something that can help people be more open and connected and willing to share with the people in their circles right? Yeah, I think that type of social kind of environment or connectedness in order to support the back end of these big experiences is going to be critical to efficacy and future success with the world of psychedelics. Because I think where psychedelics fell short before as they emerged and it was all about the psychedelic, it was all about the experience and we weren't thinking about the preparation, we weren't thinking about the integrative support that is critical now. So I think that type of enabling effort or an amplifying effort is going to be a huge area. There's such a huge need as these things start to permeate kind of medical legalization, that I think there's room for a lot of people to do a lot of good work. And I think there's a lot of people to probably make a lot of money doing it right and producing something that's putting kind of the patient care first and really giving people the support network that they need to kind of.

Ross O’Brien    52:25

Change for the better. Nick I totally agree and I mean we should be doing these things now, not waiting to be reactionary, totally should be very proactive about how we're going to tackle these things and look, you're someone who I look up to, I love the coaching conversation. I feel like I got some coaching today. I really learned a lot from the discussion and uh, you've got a partner in us to help in every way we can and keep doing all this great work.

Nick Norris        52:47

So thanks for your time and yeah, always an honor, I appreciate spending time with you.

Ross O’Brien    52:51

Thanks.

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