Our co-founder Zack Schreier had a fascinating conversation about freedom and entrepreneurship with Nikki Corson on her podcast Life Amplified.
Zack and Nikki covered the following topics:
- The concept of freedom and the need to naturalize it as part of our worldview.
- Zack's argument that freedom is found in the assembly of specific structures and the choices we make.
- The importance of recognizing the spiritual aspect of life and how it relates to scientific and philosophical understanding.
- The concept of choice in our daily consumption of food.
Nikki Corson
Today I am super excited to have sort of a celebrity on our show today. If you watch Shark Tank at all, which, hello, who hasn't, you will recognize this guest. So today we have Zack Schreier, who if you've watched Shark Tank, you might remember he and his childhood best friend stepped into chicken costumes for their appearance for their startup Quevos. And he is a young gentleman, but very smart. He is a health guru, but is multifaceted in his areas of expertise. Zack, thank you so much for joining us today.
Zack Schreier
Yeah. Thank you, Nikki.
Nikki Corson
You know, let's just get to the really cool part because anytime anybody's on TV, especially when it's a super popular show, it's like, oh my God, how the heck did that happen? Zack, just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and kind of what led you into what you're doing now.
Zack Schreier
Yeah, sure thing. So my story really starts my health journey, specifically an entrepreneurial journey, starts in 6th grade. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. And so that basically put me in charge of maintaining my blood sugar using insulin. And that's a pretty constant balancing act. So it gives you this sense of just basically how much variability there is in your physiological state. Specifically in this case, blood sugar and insulin levels required to address blood sugar fluctuations. And that was actually a lot to handle as a young kid. And basically every type one, which is about a million Americans actually have to go through that process of learning to manage their sugar with insulin. And you pretty quickly find out that every single thing you do has an impact on blood sugar. And so you have to start building a larger and larger model for essentially understanding how different lifestyle choices impact sugar and then what to do about that. So that's sort of the start for me. And I'd say it was a blessing and a curse, of course. Curse because it's a full time job essentially to manage sugar and there's no days off, but a blessing because it definitely launched my thinking about food and consumption and even sort of designing life for longevity and performance.
Zack Schreier
So I guess, long story short, I got into the entrepreneurial space, particularly in the packaged goods space, and created the product that you mentioned, which is Quevos. That was a low carb chip made from egg whites. And we took that from concept in my kitchen all the way up to shelf ready product in thousands of stores in America. And actually. Since then, I've also launched a second brand, totally separate from Quevos, actually, and that is Lifestacks Supplements. And basically, our thesis there is that there's all sorts of excellent supplements that really support daily performance and long term health, but they're inconvenient. You have to do your own research and so your own powders and capsules, and it's like, do you really want to take like, 30 capsules a day and sort of manage all that and think about all that? Probably not. So what we do is basically to infuse consumption occasions with really well formulated stacks of nutraceuticals. So take ten different ingredients that are all excellent, support health holistically and blend them together and get this basically pretty acute performance benefit and this long term health impact and deliver that in a delicious occasion.
Zack Schreier
So something like a coffee creamer, for example, or an electrolyte mix. And so that's the thesis that we've got at Lifestacks, and we're actually pretty young. We've been in the supplement space for a long time, just formulating and learning, but we're new to the market with our coffee creamer.
Nikki Corson
I absolutely love that because yes, when you start educating yourself on supplements, the health benefits and longevity, youth, beauty, all those things that we want, oh, my gosh. It's easy to just line your counters with hundreds of bottles if you bought everything that you wanted to take. But of course, and I'm awful about being consistent because you hit the nail on the head. I do not want to take 30 pills a day. It seems like it's not that hard, but when you start doing it daily and you're taking all these pills, it is absolutely miserable. Yes, for sure, you did that. And so you have coffee creamers, which I'm definitely going to try your product because I put right now a collagen creamer in my coffee. But if I can get even more vitamins and supplements and nutrients that I need, then that's even better. So super cool. How old are you, Zack, if you don't mind me asking? I've never asked anything.
Zack Schreier
That's all right. Yeah, I'm 24.
Nikki Corson
That is incredible. Kudos to you. I love speaking to entrepreneurs, but I started out as a very young entrepreneur myself. I'm much older than you, but I started my journey very young. It's something that interested me at a young age, which I was definitely a weirdo to my friends, but it paid off, so ha ha. So we were chatting a little bit before we started recording. And I swear, sometimes I tell myself I just need to record that too, because sometimes we have really great conversations that are recorded, but we were just kind of talking about what we would get into today. And you brought up freedom and I was like, taken back a little bit because of course you're in the health space and not that it doesn'tie in together, but not what I was expecting. And freedom, that word, I'm sure people that are listening, they're already thinking what that word means to them. So when you said, this is something that's been on my heart that I want to talk about, what is it? What about that word is drawing you today that you want to express?
Zack Schreier
Yeah, excited to be talking about this with you. So freedom for me is both a sort of conceptual domain that's got to be sort of understood and sorted out and naturalized, so to speak. Naturalizing something means basically making it a part of the natural world and being able to understand it in the context of other scientific ideas. And then freedom is also, for me, a sort of personal, intuitive concept. And I think everybody's very familiar with that version of it. And I'll step back and say there's a challenge, which is it appears that we've got these physical bodies. And these physical bodies are composed of material stuff. And that material stuff has a lawful behavior in a physical universe. So if you want to apply Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics, that stuff not only applies to stars and fabrics and whatever you want, but it also applies to the stuff that composes us. And so this sort of difficult question that's been sort of maybe the centerpiece of philosophical debate has, at least in the public discourse, is whether we can even understand ourselves to be free in the first place, given that we're made of parts and those parts behave lawfully.
Zack Schreier
But I think fortunately, that way of putting it is actually fairly misleading if you focus only on the decomposition of something that you're looking at. So here we are, looking at me or you and we're, these things that are made of parts. If you focus only on taking something that already exists and breaking it down into things that are behaving lawfully, that compose it, you're missing a key piece of the story, which is why that particular thing instead of anything else was assembled in the first place. So you're missing the fact that I'm only one of the options as to what to do with all the materials that compose me. It could also just be it could be a blob of parts that aren't something that behaves and thinks and feels like I do. But instead it is actually something that behaves and thinks and feels like I do. So I think freedom is in part found in the assembly of particular structures that are actually optional. Sorry, I know that's quite a mouthful.
Nikki Corson
It was but I'm taking notes. I'm following you. And I will have to say I've never thought of freedom this way before. And us Americans, when we hear the word freedom, I mean, go the other way, we're thinking fireworks, 4 July red, white and blue and America. But freedom is something that we all have been kind of groomed to value and it is the right to choose, right? And you're saying, which blows my mind because I've never thought of it this way, is that we are made of parts and those parts behave lawfully. And when you say that, just break it down for everyone to understand, because I understand in the scientific world, right, that there are laws of physics, you're saying our parts that we're made of, follow these laws. Are we really free? We're actually programmed to behave a certain way because what we're made of behaves a certain way.
Zack Schreier
Yes. That's the key challenge. When you have people that are trying to do philosophy of science and understand our condition, that's a very common sort of position that people resort to is it must be impossible to be free in reality, given these physical laws that underwrite what's happening in our bodies. But I actually think that that is misleading, it is not fully correct. And actually there is a notion of freedom that is very much like what we intuit, that is actually true of our existence in the universe. And I think you basically said it, it's got to do a choice. So here's the way I would understand this. And this is pushing the position that we sort of just outlined about the lawful behavior of things. That's kind of a reductionist physicalist view, but I've got a constructive response to that reductive view. And the constructive response has to do with understanding the specific structures that we are and what the fact of our particular composition behavior means for the kind of impact we can have in the world and on ourselves. And as I said, it's got to do with choice. So basically, here's the way I understand this.
Zack Schreier
You've got all these resources at your disposal, so all these different things that are available for intervention or for combination, whatever it is. So here I'm looking at my keyboard and there's all these options on the keyboard and if I go to type something, it's not yet sort of lawfully dictated. I'm not constrained to type a particular set of words. I can type anything that the keyboard lets me type. So these are sort of my resources. But of course I'm going to type one particular thing. And so the reductive physicalist would say, oh look, that's just the laws of physics playing out here. You type that one thing, you are always going to type that one thing. There's no freedom in that because all the parts just made it so. But the point is actually, if you only look at the parts, you're missing the global behavior or the fact that actually the parts were cooperating in a system that was genuinely a chooser. So as I went to type, I literally consulted what it was that I was trying to get across. And then I typed specifically those things that actually achieved my message or speech is the same thing.
Zack Schreier
We've got all these words in our vocabulary and what dictates which words we choose at any one point. The point is it's actually us as a global cognizer or a thinker or a chooser, a feeler that actually dictates the use of those parts. So I think basically if I had to sum this up again, I'm sorry, it's quite a mouthful, I know, but we have to account for not only the reductive aspect, but also the constructive aspect. Not only the parts, but also the global pattern that those parts are arranged into. And that global pattern very well might be something that thinks and chooses like we are. So I think it's very important to notice the properties that we experience from the inside, figure out how those actually fit into physics rather than just count them out in the first place.
Nikki Corson
Yeah. And forgive me, my mind goes to the spiritual side, which, if you study energies and spirituality in the universe and how everything is created I mean, some of us believe that we are very much particles of space from a long time ago that have evolved, of course, here on Earth, but that we are the stars, we are the universe. That is what is inside of us and all these energies. So astrology, all this stuff comes from essentially the energies, the universe, where we are in the universe as we write around space. I know these are not technical terms. Don't cringe it's without using all the scientific verbiage similar in what you're saying. So some of these things are standing out to me and I would say that we very much have a choice in a lot of things. I think our mind is very powerful. I believe that we can even program our genes. We could start getting into epigenetics and things like that. Not that I am a philosopher or a scientist, but that's my little two cent. I think when we get in touch with our energy and the energy around us that we are quite powerful and we definitely have a choice.
Zack Schreier
I totally agree with that. And I think that point has to be that the spirit has to actually guide the philosophy in this case. Because when we break it down into in this sort of intuitive scientific way, like this reduction into parts, we really do miss the big picture. Everything you just said is, I think, exactly how we feel about our lives from the inside. And we're not wrong to feel that way. It's really what's happening with us that has to be put back into the scientific and philosophical picture. And I don't think collectively the scientific community is there, but I do think there's many people that are working on trying to understand how these things fit together. So how we could be choosers in the context of physics. And it's a difficult problem, but I think it's also quite a spiritually enriching one because it sort of helps us to recover and understand what we sort of already knew about ourselves.
Nikki Corson
Yes, that phrase right there. I'm hearing a lot lately as I study more and more in this area and it's being repeated over and over that we already know it's inside of us, but we got away from it. And we've been programmed and groomed for so long that we're just so out of touch with ourselves that we've reached for all these external things to validate us, complete us, to guide us, heal us. All these external things that really we don't need because we have it all, but we're not in touch with it. And that's something collectively, I would say we need to work on my two cent again. But it's interesting how one would go about proving that, because in the scientific world, you can't just say something that would be a hypothesis, right, or an idea. But you have to have proof, you have to have data to show and energy can be recorded. But I can't even begin because again, that's not my area of expertise. I cannot even begin to understand or think how they would prove some of the things that we're talking about to be true. Are you participating in anything like that now?
Nikki Corson
The studies or trials? Because you seem extremely into it.
Zack Schreier
Yeah, definitely into it. I think we're in a lucky position. There's lots of experts talking about their areas of study in public forums and so I've definitely heard my fair share of podcasts on this topic and read some papers know, I guess some books along the way. I'd say. Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves was something that switched me from thinking in the first sort of reductive framework that I laid out to thinking more in this constructive way about who we are and how to understand our choices and freedom. So that was sort of something that launched me in this direction maybe six years ago or so. Then I guess I've been bringing in frameworks from economics, the most intuitive frameworks from economics, to try and fit these things together. So to understand how you can have sort of macroscopic or gross large scale global behavior, like what we want to describe the human mind or humanity in general, and how you can reconcile that with these parts that we've talked about, I think. Can I just allude to this idea? When you're making a choice, what is going on inside of you? You're making explicit some options that you have, right?
Zack Schreier
How do these options work? So we can go to the find something that we actually make some choices about. So let's take a sort of daily consumption structure or something like that. You're like, okay, I haven't felt so good and I want to feel better. And I know that the foods I'm eating are part of the problem and good foods can be part of the solution. And so now, all of a sudden you've taken something that maybe was automatic yesterday and you've recognized the freedom or the optionality, the possibility of choice when it comes to that range of things. And you might even make explicit yourself that here's something bad I could have that I want. Here's something good that's going to nourish me, that I also want for different reasons. Maybe I'm not addicted to it but I believe it's good for me and I'm drawn to it for other reasons. And so anyways this is basically a representation of supply. It's a representation of what could be arranged if only the energy were to be allocated towards it. So in essence you're almost like a business. You're basically saying okay we've got a budget and we've got these resources and we can go and create some outcome, we can go and apply our energy to making this salad and steak or whatever.
Nikki Corson
Right?
Zack Schreier
But that's your choice. You could also apply the energy to walking the store and using your cash budget and your time budget and your physical budget to go and procure some packaged goods or whatever. So anyways these are the supply side. Who is the consumer? You're the consumer. So basically at the same time that you're the one that's putting the world into a certain order which is what supply basically is you're also the one receiving that order and you are the one valuing different possible states. And so I think that's really the sort of freedom loop that we are on all the time and we can actually enrich with our thoughts, we can bring more things into the fold for consideration and reconfiguration. So yeah, basically the requirement on us is to make explicit our options and then to figure out what we really want and then we can get those to match. Just like suppliers and consumers in the market but all internally, all our own closed loop that we're basically guiding ourselves. So this is a sort of concept of self governance and also like self is market. So you are both the supplier and the consumer and that's in a sense your global behavior it's who you are on a higher level and the parts are only just constituents of that.
Zack Schreier
They're leveraged, they're purposed for this higher level purpose. So it's a sort of different view of how to understand what we are when you take it from the sort of top down perspective absolutely.
Nikki Corson
I have never discussed this at this level on this show. So I'm quite fascinated. We're nerding out today guys and taken what you've learned and I'm going with that. You do believe that we are in fact free. We do in fact have choices and we can change, we can completely break cycles, we can completely break behaviors, habits and completely change our lives and our paths. And I get some would argue well that was the plan the whole time, that was your destiny and maybe that's so but people I see it all the time, people choose to stay stuck or they make a choice whether it's nutrition, health, career. We make choices every single day and sometimes we choose things that are not the best for us and then sometimes we do and we completely make these changes. We have to change those behaviors, habits, et cetera. Sometimes our beliefs, I mean I've changed and just in the last five years, maybe not who I am at my core, but my behaviors, my beliefs, my perception, all of that has changed. I make completely different choices now than I used to and I will probably continue to grow and evolve and as I just kind of search for this best version of myself.
Nikki Corson
So how have you used this knowledge that you've gained in your everyday?
Zack Schreier
Yeah, that's a good question too. You said something really interesting, which is this idea of it being inside of us already and how that's sort of becoming a theme in the health space. And I think it's important to note that sort of two things we are habitual creatures so we do adopt a way of life and we usually sort of find ourselves just occupying a particular set of habits and some of them we kind of chose beforehand, sort of but not really. And we're sort of entrenched and it's temporary. I was speaking again about the supply side, sort of what you end up doing, what you end up creating for yourself. A key idea is to recognize that while you're doing that thing there's all these other different things that you could do with your time and your attention and your energy and your existence in your body and all this stuff. Your resources are tied up in one particular purpose but that doesn't mean there aren't other purposes that they could be applied to. So if you think of like a business, it's like, okay, all of our equipment and all of our employees are set on doing a certain set of things because that's our current way of behaving in the market.
Zack Schreier
But that doesn't mean that we can't pivot now. We're not going to be able to produce a whole different product tomorrow. There's going to be cycles of R and D and capitalization and rearranging the organization to achieve different outcomes. We shouldn't think that it's within us to be a whole different version of ourselves tomorrow. It might really not be. We might actually have to accept that the process of changing oneself is actually slow and requires a lot of iteration. But at the same time if you stack together a lot of incremental changes you can really overhaul your current ways of doing things and really shift your behavior pretty globally. But it just takes time. So that's sort of supply side and it is within us, but we just have to be patient on the demand side. So this is really where now I'm answering your question about how this has impacted my life. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it is that I actually demand in a deep way, not superficially. It's easy enough to say oh, I demand checking my email every ten minutes and I demand never going a moment without being able to look at something or be distracted by something.
Zack Schreier
Those are a sort of temporary and superficial demands. They're just what I happen to spend my attention on when I'm just doing my habitual things and I'm speaking sort of about all of us and about myself, but get into all sorts of behaviors which they're things that I'm motivated to do, but only in this really low level, not very free way. So the question for me is what's really in terms of what's inside me, what's really the sort of deepest things that I demand that maybe I've not even treated as real possibilities for actualization because they're just not the source of things that come about in daily life. So these are really more the meaningful things. Like the things that actually that afterward you say wow, that was a really rich, meaningful experience that actually made this time period shine or glow, made this whole thing worth. It something I would look forward to that sort of thing again. So I think that's within us too, this sort of deep level of orientation towards meaning and this deep appreciation of certain meaningful things when they come up. But unfortunately it's very submerged. We are so used to the fact that these things that we really want don't get actualized, that we learn to bury them, totally forget about them, treat them as childish, potentially.
Zack Schreier
So that's the sort of thing that I'd like to recover more of going forward and figure out actually how to arrange my life so that it actually provides and meets these sort of deeper needs that I feel. So I guess sorry, it's very vague still, but I say I am trying to arrange the supply side of things so that I can actually service these deeper needs that I have. I think on the supply side, you need your health, you need homeostasis and equilibrium in order to have this more adaptive sort of opportunistic stance. If you don't have health, then don't feel good enough to actually go and do the things that you need to do. So that's foundational for me, but then also trying to figure out how to sort of where in the world to go and who to talk to and about what, and not being shy about that not being too restricted in my view of what's possible in the future. But again, I've got to be patient about that because things aren't going to happen tomorrow. It's going to be over the course of months and years that change happen.
Nikki Corson
Right? So I'm really resonating with what you're saying and hopefully this resonates with you, but pretty much the same thing. So at a very young age, I mean, I've always been driven, ambitious, hardworking work ethic, ridiculous over the top. I've just did the hustle and the grind, burning the candle at both ends. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I pursued that while also working in the corporate world and climbing the ladder there, also building businesses on this. I mean, starting a family. So sometimes working myself literally into the ground, having to recover from that, and when you're younger, bounce back a little more quickly. And I'm not saying that's how anyone should live or not should live, but whether it's what's going on in the world, your environment that you're in. I was definitely groomed and took on the belief that to be successful, I had to do certain things, and I had to work a certain amount of hours and not take vacations and not take time for myself. And not I'm not saying I was brainwashed by any means, but just taking information out there and then building my own beliefs.
Nikki Corson
And it definitely became a culture, like, they call it hustle culture right now, where people are not living a very high quality of life, their health, especially as we get older and we've maintained that life for so long, we start having health issues. At Gosh. I think I was 30, think I was 34, and I was sitting in front of my functional medicine doctor, because I'm not a huge fan of traditional doctors, not that they're bad people, but I just don't like the system. But I had just had an extensive blood panel done. I wasn't having any major issues, so I thought but I just, again, always like to check in and do things that are healthy. And she looked at me, and she's like, you have got to calm down. And I'm looking at her like, what are you talking about? I am calm. And she's like, you're not calm. Your sea level proteins are through the roof, and you're stressed out. You aren't eating enough. I'm seriously worried you're going to have a stroke. And I looked at her like she had ten heads. Like, I'm 34. I'm not going to have a stroke.
Nikki Corson
Right? That's my ignorance. I'm like, I'm too young to have a stroke. That can't happen to me. But she just looked at me like, no, I'm serious. Like, whatever you need to do, you need to do it. And I couldn't believe that I was being told that. And it took me some time to really let that sink in and really reflect on my life and how yeah, I mean, successful business, great family, this, that. But I wasn't taking care of myself at all. Those were the choices that I was making because I was so focused on success and building wealth and this and that. That was the only thing that mattered. And then I would filter in time for my family, myself, without completely there was no time for that. I mean, I would joke and laugh and I seriously meant it that I would rest when I died because while I'm here on Earth, I have things to accomplish. And that was seen as good. Like, oh, success, hard worker. Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. And as I've really dove into self improvement, learning how to take care of my body, learning how to cut out time for myself no matter what, I'm no longer interested in the things that I used to be interested in.
Nikki Corson
And working 16 hours days is not a flex. That is not freedom, that is not living your best life at all. And I'm not going to sit here and say I regret my past or anything that I did because I do believe it all happened for a reason. I really am just gravitating now towards things that bring me peace. And anything that's not in alignment with that, that is causing stress, anxiety, anything that just isn't alignment with what I'm trying to do, I'm okay with just saying, no, thank you. And I used to not be like that because I was so scared of missing an opportunity or if I even took a break, I would start having overwhelming guilt that I could have accomplished so much work in the time that I just went and got a massage or whatever. So hopefully I didn't go too far off track with what you're saying. But it's like there's the superficial stuff and then what do we need? What do our bodies and our mind need? Are we giving ourselves that? Are we really happy? Or have we sold ourselves this idea of what happiness is and we're just on this endless pursuit to reach it and it's so unobtainable that we're never going to be there.
Nikki Corson
At least I did that. I set this stuff up here and I said, oh, happiness is over there and I'll only be happy once I get over there. And I had to learn, no, you can be happy right now. There isn't anything external out there that can make you happy.
Zack Schreier
Yeah, totally. In response to what you just said, I think the more people that can hear that journey younger, I think the more people are going to find happiness sooner. There's sort of lovely thing where information is non rival, meaning you can just sort of make infinite copies of information very cheaply. And the fact that I get a copy doesn't mean that your copy goes away or anything like that. And so I think lessons and concepts are like that, too, where you might have had to go on this long journey, sort of of burying yourself in work and then discovering your unhappiness and recovering from that, and then teaching and then somebody that didn't have to do all that can hear from you and shortcut part of that process and basically get a copy. Now that you through your journey, work very hard to create essentially. So I think that's definitely important for people to hear that idea that if happiness is always around the corner because you always think you have to bring it about in the world, when you get there, you're not going to actually feel good. You're just going to be the same high, strong sort of workaholic that you were before, basically.
Zack Schreier
And then you just find something else that you think is going to bring about your happiness if you just work towards it, stepping back. So freedom is in some sense amenability to the flexibility, being able to occupy different arrangements and then also not just being able to occupy those, but being able to guide yourself through the space of arrangements. So you can actually basically by doing an intro process of consideration, you can choose this or that, that moment or that month or year when I don't know exactly how it sort of bubbled over for you. But at that point when you realized you had to make a change, that reflected basically an instance of freedom. And it's sort of using your freedom to make larger scale change for your life and do a sort of broader restructuring, reconfiguring, redirecting than most of the choices that you usually make on a daily basis. But there is that opportunity for all of us. There's nothing in the universe that keeps you where you are right now that says you must continue to do what you're doing. Just consideration itself about your life is already tapping into a capacity to redirect.
Zack Schreier
But maybe a few more things. I think what you were doing before was also a utilization of your freedom in a sense, because it's something you were able to do. You were able to work yourself 16 hours a day for years. But that's just one choice and there's many drawbacks associated with that choice. And so I think the switch also reflects freedom. One quick idea here. I think part of what our freedom has been designed for, evolutionarily. And this amenability allows us to weave collective cultural fabrics that we didn't inherit. So groups of us can adopt new ideas, new technologies, new rituals, or form new companies. And basically we find ourselves in arrangements that are made of us that didn't exist before, but now exist because of our behaviors and our efforts. So I want to point to two different sorts of fabrics that we can participate in. One is maybe you could say outcomes driven and the other is more personal, value driven or value driven. And it's almost like thinking about economy versus thinking about culture or family or well being or something like that. So I think a lot the purpose, the purpose that arranges us is in large part economic.
Zack Schreier
We are offered the chance to work really hard to bring about certain outcomes for certain businesses, for certain consumers. And that's kind of the loop that we find ourselves basically upholding. And that's what the world is basically made of everybody's personal orientations are sort of deformed by this sort of collective entity that's taking advantage of the fact that we're free and giving us a certain set of incentives and purposing us for this higher level economic purpose. But that's not the only sort of value outcomes for businesses are not the only kinds of good things in the world. And namely we've got this internal emotionality it feels like something to be us every instance and every day. And so there's different cultural entities that we can find ourselves participating in that actually instead of servicing the economy, service the constituents, the members, the people. And so it's almost like being at a business versus sitting around a campfire. There's certain fabrics that we find to be much more enriching now. It's not to say it's either or. I think our lives are going to for now they're made of economic participation and personal time. But I think maybe it's really important that we emphasize finding meaningful things to do with ourselves outside of work and maybe things that are much more important to us than work because that's only really part of what we can do with ourselves.
Nikki Corson
Yeah. And our current culture in America anyway is very social media driven and there's just constant messages and information going out and we're still very much in Hustle culture. I see a lot of you watch TV, you're not going to be successful and if you spend too much time doing hobbies you're not going to be successful. For one, I don't even like being on social media that often anymore because I found it to just kind of drain my energy with all the mix of different opinions and some of them are opinions that people are putting out as factual data when it's more really just a perception. People that don't know that are taking this in and I know when I was much, much younger I would have I would have been like, okay, I've got to never do this, never do that. I've got to always be doing this because I want to be successful too. I think there's balance, right? And you've got to can't ever take anything at that surface level. I think everything is multidimensional. It's not meant that if you ever sit down and watch a movie because you took an hour or two of your time to just relax and do something that you enjoy that you're not going to be successful.
Nikki Corson
It's if you only ever sit there and watch movies then you'll be successful in that. Maybe you're very happy that you watched all those things but you may not be able to pay your bills if you didn't go and make some money. Because we do have to make money. We do have to take care of ourselves. So it's about balance, right? And making those choices, right, balanced choices and decisions for ourselves. That okay and balance for me doesn't mean 50 50 balance meaning what is needed at that time. Sometimes I need to spend a little more time working but then sometimes I need to spend more time on myself and my family. So it's never 50 50, it's really just being super present and engaged in whatever is needing my attention at that time and that's to me having a good quality of life where I feel fulfilled and I'm doing things that make me happy. I'm not being a slave to one or the other. Oh, I have to do this. We always get to choose in every single moment and we can change it literally at any time.
Zack Schreier
Yes, right. Exactly. One sort of feature of modern context that I've thought about some that I think we can actually problematize and maybe potentially solve is if you wanted to have the most meaningful time you could. If you really wanted to take advantage of your freedom and enjoy your life, you'd probably want to do that in a social context. Right? For most of us, we are social creatures and where would you go, what would you do? What kind of opportunities are there to have really rich experiences? I'm a little nervous that COVID being sort of an accelerator of this but as just a pre existing trend, we are actually quite insulated and at this point asocial antisocial, a lot of social interaction is mediated through text and the social media platforms and I think that is not actually an adequate substitute for us. It doesn't actually hit those meaning cords that are deep within us. It feels like it's social responsibility and obligation to text and all that stuff and maybe there's some marginal opportunity and joy in that but it's not the same as actually being in a real social fabric. So I think we might have to figure out how to there's this asymmetry between past and future.
Zack Schreier
It's never going to look like it did so we can romanticize like sitting around a campfire and not having phones and just having nothing to worry about. But I think ultimately we're going to have to transpose the value of that sort of experience to sort of a future and fit that all into the context of a future. So yeah, I think that's an open question like how are we going to find maximum social cohesion and meaning again? I treat that as it's an expression of demand and now we need to get the supply side right? What kind of context can actually be arranged that allow us to feel whole? And it can't be left to individuals either because we just don't have the willpower, the energy, the resources, the creativity to actually configure environments that are optimal for us. We're really meant to inherit environments preexisting cultural fabric. We can't be burdened with creating one, wholesale ourselves. That's something important to me and I hope in the coming years, like entrepreneurs start to actually take up the mantle of designing structures that are meaningful for people to occupy. So, yeah, we'll see. I feel like right now there's not as many.
Zack Schreier
It's hard to really maximize value, one's life when these larger sort of group contexts are not present. Basically. Actually quite a few for me, because I was just in college, like three years ago, and so I remember having a fabric that I was part of that I could really rely on for all sorts of engagement and meaning. And now it's like, if I'm lucky, I'm visiting friends once a month or every two months and we're having a grand old time for a weekend, but it's not the same as a sustained fabric of meaning and engagement. That's something I'm looking for. Still.
Nikki Corson
Interesting. That is interesting. So I will say this because I am quite a bit older than you, right? So my generation is way more used to the in person. We didn't grow up with all of the technology that is out there now that make the social media, the Zoom, the FaceTime, all of that. We just didn't have that. So you were maybe talking on the phone or you were meeting in person, and most times you're meeting in person, you're not just doing phone conversations. And so my generation is still we're still meeting. I am around so many people all the time. We are seeking that out because we're used to it. So it's so interesting to hear you say that, because your generation is not used to that and has very much adapted to the current technology. I think COVID definitely changed that. Kids that were and I have teen daughters, so I see what you're saying, where they do a lot of FaceTime. My oldest daughter got her license two years later than she could have. She had zero interest in driving, going, meeting up, because they were FaceTiming and there just wasn't that connection.
Nikki Corson
And then maybe they felt connected and that's just what they knew. They didn't really know, at least I'm talking for teens, not for you, but they didn't really even know what they were missing, I don't think. Yeah, I think it's going to be really important that your generation has that voice and says, hey, human connection is important for us. I mean, we do need it. And I can't quote the studies exactly, but I know that there have been studies on human connection and the need for it, and it's not as drastic. Of course, if you have zero human interaction, you're not locked in a cell somewhere looking at four walls and never see the light of day. That's totally different. But I think it's going to be very interesting to see that play out. The younger generations, how everything comes to business, but more importantly, the social aspects of life, the parties, or I'm a member of several different mastermind groups and I fly all over the United States to meet up and we're like so we're meeting and I mean hundreds at a time even.
Zack Schreier
That's really great. I was going to say I've done some travel for we just had Expo West which is like the biggest food show annually for Cuebos and for lifestacks. And I would say my energy and daily well being is just like so many notches higher when I'm actually in the midst of something like that. It's not like I see people here in Chicago hang out some weekends and some weeknights and whatnot but it's not really a fabric. It's not like a place to be where things are well arranged for a meaningful life. It's very autonomous and independent. Maybe this is because I'm remote and I'm an entrepreneur and so it's just me and my business partner call in all the time and that's kind of my daily structure, lack thereof really. But I'm almost imagining would it be possible to find ourselves in college or camp like settings full time? Could I just go live somewhere that was like college but for adults, for remote working adults and I think there are concepts like that out there. Like I know some remote work resorts and that sort of thing but I think people are lonelier than they used to be and it's really for lack of inheriting a fabric.
Zack Schreier
Sounds like you've been able to sort of make a social fabric that's really robust for yourself. So that's something we can aspire to. But I think many of us are feeling somewhat lonely actually. So it'd be great if it was easier to overcome that.
Nikki Corson
Well, that's honestly why I ended up seeking out and joining a couple of the masterminds that I did. Because as a workaholic entrepreneur, I know a lot of people, I have a few friends, but I just worked all the time, and I didn't really ever socialize other than the people that work for me. And of course, I'm talking about work. So I noticed a change in me and not that there's anything wrong with the people that I work with but I just needed a social setting and I sought that out because I noticed that I needed that. I needed to be around like minded people and be able to have different conversations about life and ideas and all that and laugh and it definitely helped enhance my life for sure. So I do highly recommend that and I know that there's a lot of them out there really, no matter what you're interested in. So I have two toy. The biggest one I'm in is more of like an entrepreneur mastermind group and then I'm in some spiritual chakra crystal Zen type masterminds. So yeah, I think that is definitely going to be important because working remote is something that we all I mean I have offices but I don't personally go into them very much.
Nikki Corson
I just get way more done working from home. So I know a lot of people work from home or work remotely and there isn't that connection. So I'm going to look into some stuff. You've got my brain like the younger generation, but like you said, there's a few things out there but I think some more things need to be created. You're onto something there for sure.
Zack Schreier
Yeah, we'll see. It would be fun to have to rediscover a community that is not just makeshift, it's not just piecemeal. But I think for many things there's freedom within our current context and we can optimize within that. And then there's wholesale shifts in the game, things that fundamentally change the context and then we've got a new set of opportunities and challenges. So I think for right now, I'll continue trying to enjoy my remote work life and find social opportunities when I can. But like to imagine in five or ten years that there's going to be a whole different situation to participate in.
Nikki Corson
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see for sure because things just keep changing, evolving, and I think most people are adapting pretty well. But as we do that, sometimes we get more and more out of touch with ourselves and that's the key. There is not losing who we are at our core, even on a cellular level. But that's a talk for another day, right?
Zack Schreier
Yeah.
Nikki Corson
We can't get into Epigenetics right now because I think your products are amazing and I want to check them out. So before we go, tell us how to check those out. Where's the best place to go?
Zack Schreier
Yeah, sure. So Lifestacks, as I mentioned, we've got an add-to-coffee product. It's an MCT based product. So MCT is a ketogenic and vegan fat - really healthy. I think it's got more health benefits and fewer drawbacks than like, putting milk in your coffee or I should say, no drawbacks. It's just really a healthy fat that we all benefit from. And we use a stack of nutraceuticals that goes really well with caffeine for daily energy and focus. So you can just have a single cup in the morning with our Lifestacks MCT and you just feel really smooth and really clear headed all day long. And the biggest report is like no crash in the afternoon. You know, with regular coffee, people feel their energy peak and dip. But what we've created really offers smooth, sustained energy throughout the day. So you can find that on Amazon. We're Lifestacks. You can type in Lifestacks or MCT Oil powder. You find us that way. We're also on Lifestacks.com that's spelled how it sounds. Stacks are combinations. So in the supplement space you put 20 things together. That's a stack. It also is an allusion to this idea of habit stacking.
Zack Schreier
So combining something you're already doing with something that you want to do, in this case nutraceuticals for the coffee occasion, you'll already add something to flavor your coffee. What if it was more functional as well. And then also this concept of your whole habit stack, the set of things that you're doing. So like your tech stack or this whole system that you've got to support performance. And then Quevos is available on Quevos.com and on Amazon, and then we've got stores around the country. And if you want to figure out if we're near you, you can use our store Locator on Quevos.com and find a store nearer. And then we're on Social as well. So eat underscore Quevos and lifestyle_ performance.
Nikki Corson
Okay, perfect. Yeah. So can't miss you. You're literally everywhere. And we will have those in the show notes as well, so you can click those links. And Zack, thank you so much. This was so much fun. This was very deep and very cool to get into. But yeah, I'm interested to watch your journey as well. You're onto doing some amazing things.
Zack Schreier
Well, thank you, Nikki. I really appreciate you indulging these topics. I hope nothing was too opaque or too abstract and that there's some tangible things that people can get out of this.
Nikki Corson
Yeah, no, definitely. We need a little abstract in our life sometimes. All right, Zack. Thank you. Take care.
Zack Schreier
You too. Thanks so much.