Hello, everyone. This is your host, Susan Rosin, and my guest today is Robert Johnson. And I couldn't screw that name up, so that was really easy. I like those kind. And Robert is in a number of different kind of niches, but I think your major one is in mushrooms. But I'm going to ask Robert to introduce himself and tell us a little bit more about himself, which I usually do well. Yeah. Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate being on. Excited to talk with you today.
Yep. My name is Robert Johnson. I'm the founder of the functional mushroom brand microboost, and we work with what are called adaptogenic or functional or medicinal mushrooms. You know, not the ones that go on the, on your pizza and not the, the ones that take you to another dimension, but the ones that, like the Chinese, have been using in their medicine for thousands of years. We work with five particular types of functional mushrooms, lion's mane, cordyceps, chaga, reishi, and turkey tail.
And we founded this particular brand after a couple of years of running another business called custom capsule Consultants. We're a white label, private label manufacturer of all sorts of different plant based medicines. And I kept getting more and more requests for Lion's mane. And I was working with a few other clients with that product. I started doing my research.
I found it really interesting and beneficial, started taking Lion's mane myself, and, you know, got so motivated to start our own functional mushroom line. So that's, that's most recently, you know, what I've been doing. And I also write about. I write about all types of mushrooms for Rolling Stone, not just adaptogenic, but also psychedelic mushrooms as well. So, yeah, I. I went to school for writing. I was a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson.
And so writing about psychedelics and Rolling Stone has kind of been a lifelong dream of mine, and I'm excited that they let me do it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. That's great. That's great. And so you were telling me that you're. You live in LA. Are you actually from LA originally or just. I was born and end up there? I was born in the Bay area when my dad was going to grad school at Berkeley. I know it well. Yes. Yeah. When I was a baby, we moved to San Diego. I lived there.
I was about an adolescent and then went to high school in Houston, Texas. Oh, my God. That's a big change. I know. Yeah. San Diego to Houston. Yeah. And Berkeley to San Diego to Houston. That's like two sides of the world. So after college, I got back to the west coast as soon as I could. LA has been my home since 2008 now. I can totally understand that. Yeah. So anyway, sorry, I didn't. Didn't mean to take that.
We're here to talk about mushrooms and other stuff like that, not our own individual. I don't know what the right word is. Excursions, I guess, you know, moving around. LA and San Francisco, San Diego are definitely great markets for mushrooms. Health conscious, I would bet. Yeah. Looking for alternative medicine. I was in the cannabis industry here in California from 2008 to 2018. So alternative medicine is definitely our bag here.
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That was when cannabis actually started to be legal, huh? Yeah, I think it was 2014 or 2012 is November. 2012 is when California legalization. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I think it was January 2014. So, yeah, it's been a long, strange trip. Yeah. Oh, exactly, exactly. No, I understand that. Yeah. Part of, part of, not part of, one of the things I enjoy about doing the podcast is just finding everybody's backstories.
I get very, I get very interested in, well, how did you end up there? What do you. North Dakota. You know, it really was supplement manufacturing that got me interested in mushrooms. When we sold our cannabis business in 2018, we started custom capsules primarily to work with CBD and hemp products. So in 2018, the federal government legalized hemp and discerned it from cannabis because it doesn't have the psychoactive effects of cannabis. Still a lot of medicinal benefits.
And I think the popularity of CBD really grew as cannabis was legalized, medicalized, decriminalized. Now in over 40 states in the US, and even back in 2014, I remember Sanjay Gupta was on CNN talking about CBD. And I got calls from the family. Previously I was the black sheep. And then they're calling me saying, hey, have you heard about this type of marijuana that doesn't get high, that has all the medical benefits?
I was like, yeah, grandma, I've been telling you about this for years, but I think that we're really seeing a parallel right now with the rise in interest in adaptogenic mushrooms. There's a real push for the legalization of psychedelics and similar to how CBD and cannabis have overlapping medical benefits, similar sort of thing with how psychedelics work on the brain and how some of these neuro protective, neuro enhancing, functional mushrooms work on the brain in similar ways.
So I think that that is part of why mushrooms are really having a moment, though. They've been, you know, used in medicine for plenty, but, you know, everyone from Oprah to Gwyneth Paltrow to Joe Rogan talking about their psychedelic and or adaptogenic mushroom experiences, you know, people start to really pay attention. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I think that that's even, that's even widening to some of the other, you know, with the LSD and those kinds of things and finding medical uses.
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Oh, yeah. It just didn't. Just in my lifetime, we're legalizing cannabis gambling, maybe psychedelics. I think the government's finally, you know, come to the conclusion that, you know, people are going to do these things. Might as well make it as safe as possible and get their, their cut of the pie. That's the last part. Yeah, you're right. That's definitely the last part. Yeah.
That's what I write about a lot in my, in my writing, you know, 2023, how to discern between someone, especially forwarding these plants, fungi in emerging markets and with their prescription for how these things should be regulated or sold to the general public. I always just kind of looking at who benefits from this and are people really authentically believe that their particular niche is the only way that these things should be regulated or just their own personal financial interest?
I agree with you. I think that nine times out of ten it's clear, like with cannabis, for example, as soon as recreational became legal in California, you had a lot of these people that granted, paid a lot of money, spent a lot of time to get these licenses. Now doom saying about, you know, buying cannabis anywhere else, you know, it's, it's, it's not safe.
It could have pesticides, but think of the children, you know, whereas in a year prior, they're campaigning against those same, you know, kind of propaganda. So it's a. It's a fun world that we, we live in. Oh, yeah. No, I was going to say you have become mainstream. I know. Actually, that's, it. It kind of almost turns me off from the whole thing. I prefer the counterculture, personally. Well, I'm sure there are some more edgy things that you can, you can get involved in. Sure. Oh, yeah.
So tell me a little bit more. There are a lot. Well, actually, even before this, there are. Lion's mane has become so normal now. I mean, everybody talks about lion's mane. If you talk to anybody who takes any kind of mushrooms or medicinal mushrooms or whatever, and it's all, oh, yeah, I take lion's mane. It's always the first one. I think. I think there's a couple of main reasons for that. I think the name is really cool. You know, it's good. It's very marketable. But seriously, it is.
Of all the functional mushrooms, the one that studies show has the most impact on our cognitive functions. I wrote an article sort of examining different generations. Senior citizens for sure, are interested in cognitive enhancement and protection against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Yeah, absolutely right.
You know, most, so many baby boomers, you know, had their, one of their parents going through one of those neurodegenerative diseases, and no one wants that for their loved ones. But so, like I was mentioning, the kind of similarities between, you know, psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, and lion's mane is two things that are pretty interesting. One is called neurogenesis, and this is actually the formation of new brain cells.
And the other is called neuroplasticity, which is forming new neural connections. And so, you know, in extreme cases on psychedelics, you know, new neural connections can equate to something like synesthesia, where you have, like, your senses kind of crossing in ways that they don't normally do, where you can see music or taste. These connections aren't normally being made.
But I think a lot of the studies around micro dosing, which is not a hallucinogenic experience, but more for healing your mind and forming these new connections. For me, like, my personal experience is change is all a matter of, well, at least it starts with awareness. If we're not aware of the mental habits that we have or the sort of even unconscious, subconscious emotional reactions that we have to situations in life, it's hard to be able to change them.
And so I think that people are interested more and more in reporting these sort of life changing effects of mushrooms because of that awareness allows them to see it for what it is and make a choice to, you know, to go in a different direction. As a supplements guy and a guy, you know, always kind of as a watchdog for people just, you know, espousing stuff for their own financial gain. You know, a lot of supplement companies and mushrooms are no exception.
You know, we'll pitch this thing as like, you know, a miracle cure all. You know, you don't need to do anything. Don't exercise, don't eat. Well, just, just take this product and, and you're going to be fine. But there's nothing like that. I've looked, you know, if there was, you know, we would, we would offer it on our website. Right? But as far as tools that are out there, of all the plant based supplements that I've worked with, mushrooms are just beyond fascinating. And there's.
There's only so much study that's gone into them. You know, prior to psychedelics being criminalized in the sixties, you know, there were thousands of research articles done on psychedelics and psychotherapy and hundreds of conferences around the world. So now it. It really feels like. Well, I can't say feels like, but, you know, I grew up kind of idolizing the sixties, you know, and some of the nick writers and, you know, the revolutionary sort of feel of that. Of that generation. And so my.
My hope is that we can, you know, sort of build on what. What y'all started back then and. And, you know, hopefully continue to evolve and, you know, just be better people. Yeah, well, good luck with that one. But it's a nice. It's a nice idea. It's a nice idea. We'll hold that idea, and maybe if enough of us keep that. Keep that and send it. Send it positive energy, we can help it along. I just. I'm. What's the right word? I'm not that. Positive isn't the right word, but, you know, that.
Optimistic. Optimistic. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. You know, we can only control what we can control, and that's right for me. You know, as an entrepreneur, I'm motivated to make our company grow for our investors, for our employees, and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy. And so when we started working with mushrooms, we created this particular vegan softgel supplement that's a combination of lions and cortisol. And what's the second one?
The second one is called cordyceps. Oh, cordyceps. Okay. Yeah, no, I just didn't hear it correctly. Okay. Yeah. There was, like, a fictional strain of cordyceps that was popularized in the HBO show the last of us this past year. It's like a cordyceps that turns you into a zombie, which is actually based in some reality.
There is a strain of cordyceps that take over ants and take over the brain of an ant and have them move into their colony, and actually the ants will die and a mushroom sprouts from its head. So there is some basis to that. Now, this is not the type of cordyceps that we put in micro. There's over 400 different types of cordyceps mushrooms, but we use something called person militaris.
Okay. My favorite anecdote about cordyceps is in the nineties, there was the women's chinese track team that competed in the Olympics, and they did so well and broke so many records that they were all drug tested. You know, it was suspicious how well they did. They all passed their drug test and their coach credited cordyceps for their improved lung capacity and energy and speed. So that I call that my, like, entrepreneur fuel.
I have two of those every morning along with a cup of micro boost coffee, which contains 3000 milligrams of mushrooms per serving. A combo of all five of the mushrooms that we make. Oh, my God. I, yeah, that's what, that's my secret to being able to work ten, 12 hours, days. Oh my God. Okay. Wow. Interesting, interesting. I'm not, I'm not sure I could do that, but yeah. Hmm. Some of the other mushrooms that we work with are really amazing as well. Turkey tail has heard of that.
A lot of antioxidant, anti inflammatory, even anti cancer properties. Probably the most famous mycologist, which is someone who studies mushrooms and is Paul Stamets, and he was the subject of the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi. And he has a TED talk where he talks about his mother who was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and less than a year to live. He gave her high doses of turkey tail for nine months or so, and she ended up living another, like 15-20 years. Wow.
That was a pretty, pretty amazing thing that stood out as I was really diving into understanding mushrooms. Reishi is known by the Chinese as the mushroom of immortality. Also has just amazing antioxidant, anti inflammation properties that it also gives them like, relief from anxiety, kind of helps you be more calm. And some of our customers use it as an ingredient in like, sleep aid products. I was just going to say sleep. Yeah.
Uh huh. Yeah. So all these different mushrooms we combine in different formulas. So we have Chaga Reishi and turkey tail and this immunity boosting supplement. And then those who, you know, are kind of new to mushrooms still and don't know, I don't know which one that we should take. We have one called wellness. That's a combination of all five. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. Interesting, interesting. Yeah. So, so you have your own line now or.
Because for a while you were, you were doing it for other companies, right? You were, yeah. So it's micro boost and micro with a Y M Y c r O boost. And so I wanted to do mushrooms sooner then, then we got around to it. But what happened was I learned that a lot of supplement companies would contact me and they would have different formulas or, you know, a list of ingredients that they wanted to include in their supplement. And as I would research, whatever they were interested in, let's say,
is Ashwagandha for example. Right. The suggested serving size of Ashwagandha is anywhere between 800 and 1500 milligrams. Right. For a daily, it's a lot. Okay. As a soft film manufacturer, it's a pretty small form factor and it's an oil based pillow. So when people would come to me and say, we want to do Ashwagandha softgels, I would explain to them, well, to really have a therapeutic dose, someone would need to take five, six, seven pills, and that doesn't seem convenient.
And a lot of people, to my surprise early on would say, we just want to have it in the product so we can say that we have. Yeah. And essentially, you know, at first I kind of push back, like, you know, but they're not going to really benefit from it unless they have, you know, enough of it. And so the same thing with, with mushrooms is the issue with, with making the small form factors that we do, depending on ask, the serving size for functional muscles
is between 803,000 milligrams per day. Right. So that was just way too much to put into small products like gummies and softgels. Oh, yeah. Until I found a company out of Canada that, that makes concentrated versions of these mushrooms basically in the form of it. So you get the equivalent of ten times the lion's mane, you know, milligram.
And so after we discovered that, I just never wanted to create a product that was a placebo or, you know, it just doesn't even make sense that you would spend so much time and energy and, you know, cost to acquire a new customer, not to give them something that they're going to really notice the benefits of it.
So, yeah, that's, I was just, I was just going to say that the downside of that is you're going to end up, if you don't do that, you're going to end up with all these people who are like, well, it didn't help me. I didn't get anything from it, you know, and you start getting. It starts to get a bad reputation. I know, I saw that happen with, with CBD.
You know, there so many rushed into that industry looking to get rich and, you know, didn't focus on making the best quality product, but you know how they can make the best margins. And I think it really tainted a lot of people's opinion of CBD because of those experiences. And I know it can help a lot of people. So I don't want to see that same thing happen with mushrooms. So one thing that's happening is kind of in the weeds and the functional mushroom supplement business. Right.
But this same company that we purchased the extracts from has petitioned the FDA to change the way that they allow supplement manufacturers to label mushroom supplements. And the reason for this, and also something I've learned in the past few years, is when you grow lion's mane or any of these mushrooms commercially, you grow it. The soil essentially is like a starchy substrate, usually oats or rice or grains that you inoculate. And the. The root system of a mushroom is called the mycelium.
And so mycelium goes into the grain, and then from what sprouts from the grain is known as the fruiting body, you know, a stem cap or in lion's mane's case, like a pom pom's cheerleader's pom pom looking fungus. If that fruiting body is what contains the majority of the beneficial compounds, there are some benefits. Beneficial compounds found in mycelium, but it's at a very small percentage.
And then in addition to that being a small percentage, a lot of these supplement companies will harvest the fruiting body, sell that in a farmer's market or in a more expensive type of product, but then they will pulverize the entire myceliated oat block, and that is what they're selling you in the, in the capsules. So petitioning the FDA to say, like, hey, the roots of a mushroom are not a mushroom.
And these companies should not be allowed to say that their product is a mushroom or even put any sort of mushroom imagery on the packaging, misleading to the Consumer. And their business is mushrooms. They've been in mushrooms for over 40 years, but still a Family owned business.
And they don't want to see the same thing that happened with CBD, happened with mushrooms, where essentially the whole market tanks because big companies out there that are just essentially selling dirt to people and calling it mushrooms. Well, human beings are nothing if not. Oh, what's the right word? I guess I need to start taking some lines, man. Opportunistic? No, no, not even opportunistic, but just whatever they can do for the most amount of money for the least amount of work. Sure.
Right. I mean, you just. It's. It's kind of. If you. I was a history major, you know, and it's just like, it's. It hasn't changed. Human beings have not changed. It's really interesting. Totally. Oh, God. Funny. Oh, well, you know, everyone is like, oh, yes, we've gotten so much more cultured, and we've really moved ahead. And you know, and it's like, not really.
We're just better at coming up with more, you know, details and other kinds of things to use to blow people up or sell them something or take their money or whatever it happens to be. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. So I've always approached, you know, supplements kind of with a skeptical mindset myself, and that's, that's really why I got into it as I wanted to make quality products for myself, for friends and family, and, you know, just kind of grew from there. Hmm. Yeah, no, exactly.
So do you, do you sell most of what you sell directly to the consumer or do you do it through other companies? Yeah, I mean, for our products on mycroboost. com. yeah, that's where majority of our sales. We do have some retailers now carrying our coffee and supplements, the white label manufacturing. You know, there's a lot of different really good quality products out there that are made by us, that are, that are sold under, you know, different brands that we work with. Okay.
Okay. Okay. And it's. It's mycro boost with a y. That's right. Okay. Yeah, it's a, you know, mycology is with, we kept the y in there. And also, if, you know, you know, like mycroboost, you, you can take it alone and it's great. But if you are taking a micro dose, it also has a good synergistic effect with it, you know, so boost your, your micro. Okay. Okay. Interesting, interesting. So do you have, since I haven't been up and actually looked at your website.
So do you have different combinations or are they all single? Kind of. So, yeah, our gummies, we, we separate by the individual mushrooms. It comes in an assorted pack. But, you know, each different type of mushroom is a different flavor and color, mostly with alliteration. We made the lion's mane, lemon, and the orange cream, cordyceps, black cherry, chaga. They all sound good. I know a lot of parents like to put that in their kids lunches. We don't use any corn syrup or white sugar.
As far as gummies go. We try and use healthy ingredients, whole foods approved ingredients. We use tapioca syrup as a sweetener and organic cane sugar. They're all vegan as well. There's no gelatin in the gummies. That's made apple based pectin that we get in Germany. So the gummies are the individual flavors. The coffee is our best selling product. I bet. So whenever we come up with a new product, I usually go and buy the 510 most popular brands out there.
So I can really understand what what others are doing. And most of these mushroom coffees taste healthy is a nice way to say it, but they don't taste that great, you know, and I'm a big coffee drinker. And so, you know, if I was gonna switch this really ingrained second cup today, it's gotta be something that tastes good. And so. And then. And then also good for you. So that product has the most mushrooms per serving of any of our products. So there's 3000 milligrams per tablespoon.
And you just mix it in with. With hot water. It dissolves really well. Which was another thing that. That I didn't like about some of these other mushroom brands. You kind of ended up with this sludge in the bottom of your cup. Yeah, yeah. Or grainy. Sometimes the grainy taste. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So this one actually tastes more like hot cocoa.
It does have some organic coffee in there as well, but it's like five milligrams of caffeine, which is about a third of a cup of coffee or a cup of Earl Grey Tea. The energy from the cordyceps and lion's mane also helps with a boost. Whenever I have, like, an early morning sales meeting, I usually go two cups of mycroboost, and I feel really on point for yeah, bet. And then. And then the vegan softgels are ones that we've done the different combinations.
So we have three different vegan softgel skews the brain, which is cordyceps, and lion's mane, the immunity chaga, reishi, and turkey tail. And then wellness is just all five of them. But those are vegan softgels as well. You know, it's very health conscious consumer that is looking for functional mushrooms, and they're pretty cool. So that's made with tapioca starch, which is the same ingredient boba is made out of. And it has a natural, what they call in the softgel biz enteric coating.
And I don't expect anybody to know what that is. I'm familiar with the word, but nothing. So what it does is people will put an enteric coating on gelatin softgels because it raises the ph of the shell. So the softgel gets down. Right. So many supplements, you take them and they're destroyed by the acid in our gut. And so the ph of your stomach is usually between four and five, which is right at the ph of a gelatin softgel.
So it'll dissolve in your stomach, and a lot of the actives in there can be destroyed in the process. So that's why they'll sometimes add an enteric coating, but with tapioca starch, it actually has a natural ph of seven. So it survives the gut, breaks down in the intestine, which is just a long way of saying that there's so much more of what's in there is actually absorbed by your body and felt and benefited from. No, that makes. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. There are lot.
There are a lot of supplement companies that have started doing that. I like a cheeseburger steak from time to time, but I've never had someone insist that they must have animal products in their softgels. So everyone wins. Absolutely. Absolutely. That sounds great. That sounds great. I don't think it's just people over 50, Susan, that want a healthier brain. Oh, no, I agree. You know, the ability to focus, concentrate more, especially these days.
Yeah. Covid just really put our health really right in the forefront for everybody. And mental health as well. I think we're all kind of still recovering from a collective PTSD of sorts from being cut off. And so many people still are. We don't need to go down that rabbit hole. But, you know, so many people are now working from home. But now home isn't even the escape anymore. Right.
Because you're stuck there working on your laptop, and the only place you get to go is down the hall and maybe for a walk at lunchtime or something. I mean, it's just. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the kind of guy that likes to be out and interacting with people. And so, yeah, that was really challenging for me. Fortunately, in California, the vitamins and supplements were still ruled as an essential business. That's right. We really started right as Covid hit.
So benefits of some companies during that time, we didn't have the access, we didn't have years of history from this particular company. But thankfully, we made it through that, and. And now we're just, you know, trying to make sure that we stay healthy and. And then we keep giving people quality products because that's. I've never been, you know, an amazing marketer, but I always believe that, you know, when we do find people that will try our products, that they'll.
They'll keep coming back because we'll give them really good service and the highest quality product possible. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So. Well, with all of that being said, I think we probably can wrap up. We've been at this for a while. Okay. And let's see. Your website is mycroboost. com with a y. Yeah. Mycroboost. You can find us on instagram at mycroboost.
If you want to find my writing on Rolling Stone, you can search Robert Johnson, Rolling Stone, psychedelics, and myself and some of my fellow mushroom entrepreneurs and journalists will be speaking at south by Southwest in March. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. That should be fun. For sure. Yep. Yep. I will put your website and your Instagram in the show notes so people can find you if they look at the show notes. I think if other.
If people are the same way I am when I listen to podcasts, I never see, I never look at the podcast, at the show notes, especially if I'm just listening. It's like, you know, give me a break. Well, they did like what they hear, and they want to learn more. Exactly. A ton of information about each one of these mushrooms. No, that's great. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
So with that, I am going to thank Robert for joining us and say the same thing that I always say at the end, which is that neither of us are doctors and this is not to be seen as medical advice. And so with that, I will see everybody next week.