(0:03) You go to school, you get trained in something, then you go get a job in that, and then you do that job and that’s your career, and then you die. (0:11) But then they got into this thing and realized they don’t actually wanna do this with their life. (0:17) Or nobody wants this particular trade anymore.

(0:23) You make 8-track players. (0:25) People aren’t buying 8-tracks anymore. (0:27) There’s this weird thing about the market where if you go in with, well, this is a thing that I do, there may be forces beyond you that no one wants to pay for that anymore.

(0:37) And so over the years, I kept meeting people who had this very single track, this is what I’m supposed to do thing, and then it disappointed them for reasons out of their control or simply I got trained to do this thing that I don’t like to do. (0:52) Then I stumbled on this Japanese word, akigai. (0:55) And akigai essentially is that which gets you out of bed in the morning.

(0:59) And sometimes it’s translated your reason for being. (1:03) And in Japanese culture, they have this very well thought through idea of akigai that you never stop working out your akigai, what it is that gets you out of bed in the morning. (1:15) And so in this season of life, this is what you’re doing, but that may change, it may shift.

(1:22) Somebody you love may get sick and so you need to care for them. (1:27) You used to do this, and now that industry is sort of dried up, but now you need to go back to school because you need to now go do this. (1:36) And they had this really interesting idea that when you no longer have something that gets you out of bed in the morning, then you’re kind of dead even if you’re still alive.

(1:43) And the reason why I find that fascinating is you can be successful, you can have a nice job, you can have a nice house, you can do all the stuff that everybody says, hey, you’ve made it, and yet wake up in the morning with a profound sense of dread, like, ugh, another day. (2:02) And despair, despair is a spiritual disease. (2:07) Despair is when you believe that tomorrow will simply be a repeat of today.

(2:13) Despair is when you look ahead into the future and each day is just another version of this. (2:21) What we really want, no matter how educated, sophisticated, accomplished we are, we want to wake up in the morning with this sense of anticipation, like, look what I get to do today. (2:36) The great Abraham Joshua Heschel said, I didn’t ask for success, I asked for wonder.

(2:43) And I love that because for many of us, we were trained for success. (2:49) Here’s how you work hard and multitask and network and get stuff done and climb the ladder. (2:53) What we weren’t taught oftentimes was to ask, is this ladder even leaned up against the right building?

(2:59) Which is a different set of questions. (3:01) It’s like it exerts a different set of muscles.

(1:49) This is the Better Ventures Oyster Mushroom Warehouse and this is the first stage of the whole process. (1:55) This is where Alex and I come in every morning. (1:57) We bring the coffee in here, we mix it with the spawn and we plant these bags.

(2:01) And as the mushroom seed or the spawn starts to take over the substrate, the coffee gets covered in a white thin layer which is mycelium. (2:08) And once it’s completely covered, we know it’s ready for the next room.

(2:11) This is the room where we actually shock the mushrooms. (2:14) So it’s kind of neat because the way mushrooms actually grow is when they feel like they’re going to die, the caps start coming out. (2:22) So in order to do that, we either change the temperature, change the relative humidity, change the CO2 content in the bag.

(2:30) So if you look at these bags right now, they have been fully colonized by the mycelium. (2:34) And then there are about three to five days they’re going to be going to the fruiting room where they’ll actually start growing.

(2:41) This is where everything kind of comes together, all the hard work starts paying off. (2:44) So you can see the mushrooms literally start popping out of the substrate or the coffee. (2:50) So it starts off, you can see, with small primordia, so the mushroom’s starting to form.

(2:56) And then over a couple of days, they start to grow and grow and you get these beautiful kind of white oyster mushrooms.

(3:01) So have they found a viable business model that is also sustainable? (3:05) The dean at their former business school is impressed.

(3:08) Being able to take something that is not only essentially of no value but of negative value, it’s a waste product. (3:14) We have to deal with it. (3:14) It’s costly to deal with.

(3:16) And being able to transform that into something valuable is really very important. (3:19) But at the end of the day, of course, the cost of that transformation, the scale at which it will have to occur, and the ultimate quality of what’s produced, these are uncertainties that they’re managing as best they can. (3:29) If they’re managed well and we get the right outcome, this is going to be a booming business.