2_5 Sabba Nazhand: From War Baby to Tech Executive, Overcoming Adversity, and Conscious Leadership

Sabba Nazhand is a self-made tech executive, investor, and advisor, and is on a mission to help bring more diverse voices to the psychedelic space by integrating the power of technology and a startup mindset. Sabba immigrated to the US as a child from war-torn Iran and spent his early career building towards a version of the American dream from dabbling in entrepreneurship to leading companies and global teams, living in places like Hong Kong, London, and NYC. He found himself faced with burnout and started a personal journey with plant medicine and overall mental health and it has completely shifted his personal and professional perspectives. Now, especially as the Iranian diaspora is faced with a crisis of dual identities, his commitment to driving conscious leadership through an integrated lifestyle is more important than ever.

Episode Description: 
In this episode, we dive deep into the remarkable life journey of Sabba Nazhand, a self-made technology executive and an immigrant who was born during the Iran-Iraq war in Tehran, Iran. Sabba shares his powerful story of being born prematurely during the war and how his parents made incredible sacrifices to save his life. We explore his struggles and the mindset of constant striving to level up, especially as an immigrant in a new country and rising to a tech executive without a formal education.

The episode also delves into the transformative impact of psychedelics on Sabba's life and how they led him to a more profound sense of spirituality and self-awareness. We discuss the emerging world of plant medicines and psychedelics and the diverse characters it attracts, from genuine healers to those seeking to exploit the space for profit. Sabba shares his insights as a conscious leader in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of empathy, trustworthiness, optimism, communication, and the courage to do hard things.

Show Notes:

• Sabba Nazhand shares his incredible life journey as an immigrant born during the Iran-Iraq war and the sacrifices his parents made to save his life.
• The importance of constantly striving to level up and the struggles faced by immigrants.
• Sabba's insights into modern and conscious leadership, emphasizing empathy, trustworthiness, optimism, communication, self-awareness, and the ability to embrace challenges.
• Sabba's transformative experiences with psychedelics and the profound impact on his spirituality and self-awareness.
• The emerging market of plant medicines and psychedelics, and the diverse characters involved in the space.
• The challenges faced by the Iranian diaspora and the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice in Iran.
• Sabba's hope for the future, driven by his personal growth, family support, and belief in conscious leadership.

You can follow Sabba here:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabbanazhand/
IG: www.instagram.com/sabba_getzehn

Transcript

00:01:08] Raad Seraj: We've become friends since last year and obviously we're gonna have lots of things that we're gonna get up to this year.

[00:01:12] Raad Seraj: Some of which maybe we'll touch upon some of which will be, will remain a mystery for now. But I want to get right to it, right to the very let's just say one of the climax of the story that is your life. When you first told me I was I was laughing with both astonishment, but also of course, this is what happens to people like us.

[00:01:31] Raad Seraj: And the kind of stuff that our parents and family have to go through to give us a better life, right? Absolutely. So without further delay, tell me about the time... Or the moment, or the place that you were being born, or right before. 

[00:01:50] Sabba Nazhand: Yeah absolutely. Needless to say, I was born into chaos. I was born, as you mentioned, I was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1982.

[00:01:57] Sabba Nazhand: So that was actually during the height of the Iran Iraq war, post revolution of the CIA backed coup of the Shah. enter the oppressive theocracy of the Islamic regime. And yeah, in the middle of the war, my mom went into labor with me two months early due to stress living in a city that was, we were actively under attack.

[00:02:18] Sabba Nazhand: And at the time our family doctor told my parents that I needed a life saving blood transfusion and I had to be taken to a hospital across town, across border. And so My father had to say goodbye to my sister, his wife, and literally drove me in the middle of the war through gunfire, negotiating with troops to get me to the hospital to save my life.

[00:02:41] Sabba Nazhand: And that was how I entered this world. It's it's fun. It's growing up. I really didn't understand the severity of this story. Laughed it off, but. Just understanding that how my father sacrifices life, my parents sacrificed their life to save me was wild and that's how I, that's how I was born.

[00:02:57] Raad Seraj: It's hard to, yeah, it's, every time I hear that story, I'm just like, what the hell? I know. That's crazy. When did you first hear? of the retelling of this story, and then, when was the last time you heard this story? 

[00:03:10] Sabba Nazhand: The first, I would say, it, it came up sporadically throughout my childhood and growing up just because it was a story to tell, right?

[00:03:19] Sabba Nazhand: And I heard it regularly, but the way my... Parents presented it. It was same thing. I think it was just them hiding their trauma, to be honest, but it was just like, Oh, yeah, you were born two months early. You're excited to come to this world. You had to get a blood transfusion. And, my mom jokes around.

[00:03:35] Sabba Nazhand: She goes, See if he had the blood of his mother and not his father's dirty blood, he'd be okay. Jokes like that. And then I would say the last time this story came up was my and 30th birthday, so maybe about 10 years ago we all went out to dinner, my parents and it was actually maybe five years ago.

[00:03:54] Sabba Nazhand: We all went out to dinner, my parents, my sister, my now wife, and they brought up the story and, they told me I was a war baby and how, like my dad literally had to. Get in the car and drive me through the war. Like imagining that, right? Like almost like a movie where you're driving through like bombshells and artillery and so forth.

[00:04:13] Sabba Nazhand: It was just like negotiating with troops and all that. It's just and at that moment I was like, Oh wow. Like I it hit me hard, but I still, I think it was a mental blocker of I didn't want to understand, or I didn't want to really. Believe in the severity of it. And of course, over the past few years, working on my mental health and just becoming more conscious of how my mind works and my life story.

[00:04:39] Sabba Nazhand: It did it, it just hit me like a ton of bricks of how. Severe and important, that aspect of my life was for me and what my parents sacrificed. Ultimate sacrifice, right? You talk about immigrants always doing, always sacrificing. And this was the ultimate, right? And that was the big shift in the last few years when it really.

[00:04:58] Sabba Nazhand: Yeah. It really dawned on me. 

[00:05:00] Raad Seraj: What exactly dawned on you? 

[00:05:02] Sabba Nazhand: It's a great question. So what dawned on me, and maybe we'll probably touch on this but the complicated relationship that i've had with my parents growing up even now but The I wish they would have done things differently, or I wish I would, I grew up in a different environment, all the I wishes like I wish that the kids that I grew up with who are, trust fund babies or their parents are well off.

[00:05:24] Sabba Nazhand: I wish my parents were like that. And they don't do much for me. And I'm stuck doing all this stuff by myself and my sister, right? It was like, it was that kind of thought process and mindset that I had. And yeah, When I sat with that story and I was, and just sat back, I was like, I'm not getting goosebumps thinking about like my father, my parents made the ultimate sacrifice of all sacrifices to save my life, literally save my life in order to even allow me to be in in this world and this and thriving.

[00:05:57] Sabba Nazhand: And that was this realization, like nothing, none of that other shit matters. Like what he did, what my mother did is. It's all I can ask for from a parent and now I, in that regard, I look up to them of am I going to do that for my kids? Absolutely. But to have that thought was really inspiring and eye opening.

[00:06:17] Raad Seraj: That's immensely powerful. And we're going to come back to this. I wanted to bookend this particular conversation, because I think You know you hear how you were born and what your early life was before you have any sort of memory of yourself as a child, but then you step into an adult, particularly as you're on a healing journey, you've gone through, these plant medicines and you've worked with this medicines.

[00:06:43] Raad Seraj: I think. Looking back, the story feels, this has a different resonance. It's very different. You're just saying that the future is fixed. It's the past that's unpredictable. And I find that's very true. Yes. Before and after plant medicine, right? Yes. So we'll come back to this sort of theme. Okay. So tell us you were born.

[00:07:08] Raad Seraj: How long were you in Iran? What was life like during that time? 

[00:07:11] Sabba Nazhand: Yeah. So I guess a little bit of backstory. So my parents live like a very upper middle class lifestyle. Obviously they're born and raised in Iran. Their whole family was there. My mother was a high school volleyball player, then became a teacher.

[00:07:26] Sabba Nazhand: My father played like semi professional soccer. He was in the air force. Later went on to be an engineer for a private aviation company building. Building helicopters for the military, for the Air Force. So I lived a great life and I was granted, I was young, but, the two to the two memories of life in Iran for me personally was playing in my grandmother's courtyard.

[00:07:49] Sabba Nazhand: I vividly remember that and then huddling as a family in the dark. In front of our window, watching our city under attack. Like those are the two core memories that I have of life in Iran. I really, I genuinely don't remember anything else. Again, I was what, five years old when we left. But that's pretty much the memory that I have of Iran.

[00:08:10] Sabba Nazhand: And then in the U. S., what was that like when you, so you came here when you were five. Yes. 

[00:08:16] Sabba Nazhand: That's you were five, yeah. So we we had a stopover. We moved to Greece. So my parents used to vacation in Greece a lot, and that was their second home. So we moved there as we were waiting to... Get sponsored by a family friend here in the U.

[00:08:32] Sabba Nazhand: S. So spent two years in Greece. Just trying to make ends meet and live. And I have actually very fond memories. I have more memories of Greece than I do of Iran. Just living by the beach is beautiful. Like warm days and nights have a lot of nice memories of it. And then eventually we got sponsored, moved to the US. We were actually supported by a congregation, a church. Put a roof over our heads found my dad a job, bought him a car. The other side of that was that it was a, we lived in a very rough neighborhood. And, violence, gang violence. It was a tough neighborhood to grow up in. That was, yeah, that was part two of our, kind of my chaos of life.

[00:09:11] Sabba Nazhand: We didn't speak any English. I spoke Farsi and a little bit of Greek. My dad spoke just enough to get by, he got a job as a bus boy at a restaurant during the day. And then he worked at seven 11 at night. So he worked, 18 hour shifts basically. And then my mom eventually got a job at a hotel and.

[00:09:28] Sabba Nazhand: That's, my sister and I were just left, not on our own because they didn't abandon us, of course, but it was left on us to, she babysat me because she's older and we took care of each other and spend time with each other at home while my parents were at school or at work, sorry. 

[00:09:41] Raad Seraj: And so what were your formative memories from that period going to school not speaking much English if at all and then I'm also curious what Because there's how old how many years older is your sister? 

[00:09:55] Sabba Nazhand: So my sister is Six years older than me. 

[00:09:58] Raad Seraj: So I'm curious to hear her experience through your eyes as well. 

[00:10:02] Sabba Nazhand: So yeah life at school. It was You know, in some regards my, I had memories of just a normal childhood playing outside, playing sports and just doing things that kids do, ride bikes and so forth. But the other side of that was, and especially in the beginning, I had, I was in the E S L English as a second language class, so it was just me and a bunch of kids who didn't speak any English.

[00:10:25] Sabba Nazhand: So it was very weird. And we would get, make fun of, 'cause we would, we were in a separate classroom and then, Growing up a few years later, speaking a little more English I found myself in a place of, I had, I didn't know where to be, I wasn't the black kids, I wasn't the hispanic kids, and I wasn't the white kids, so I got bullied often, and because I didn't have a click.

[00:10:47] Sabba Nazhand: I didn't know who to be. And not until sports and music came into my life. And I started getting, I was pretty good at sports. I started listening to music, specifically hip hop. That kind of formed my middle school years and friendships because I was good at sports and I could, wrap a few lyrics and be okay with and the kids are like, okay, this guy's not that bad.

[00:11:08] Sabba Nazhand: And then from my sister's perspective, I think it was the same like Especially as a girl she, she caught on, she, I think, acclimated faster than I did because one, she spoke the language she picked up the language significantly faster than I did, ended up having a core friends group though she went through some troubles, like one of her best friends was shot and killed across the street from where we lived, and like they, we used to walk to school together, so she had her own set of as an older child but, yeah, that was her and then having to babysit me I don't think she really wanted to do that for, a handful of years, right?

[00:11:45] Sabba Nazhand: Hip hop resonated with me one because it's just incredible music, but I think the connection of, hip hop comes from a place of trauma to some extent, like it's a group of people that are. speaking their truth. They're speaking what their experiences of life, whether it's good, bad, ugly.

[00:12:07] Sabba Nazhand: And I, I resonated with that. I resonated with that kind of mindset. And because where I lived was very much that was a huge influence. Everybody listened to hip hop. Like that culture was very prevalent where I grew up. So that really helped me. It formed my younger years of who I am, how I should act, what I should.

[00:12:28] Sabba Nazhand: Listen to what how I should dress all these things like hip hop literally formed me In like my formative years as a young kid. 

[00:12:36] Raad Seraj: Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that I think for you it was hip hop for me. It was rock music. Yeah. I think a lot of the alienation, frustration, rage, anger. Yeah.

[00:12:50] Raad Seraj: It was all manifestations of that. The bands that I fell in love with I remember the first time I listened to Tool, it was me moving back from Saudi Arabia back to Bangladesh. And it was like in 99 or 2000. And we just got internet back in Saudi and it was dial up, like you'd have to basically spend a week downloading three songs on LimeWire or some shit, or Kazaa.

[00:13:15] Raad Seraj: Ah, that's amazing. And then as soon as I went to Saudi, which was at that time completely... Let's just say blanket and it's censored. Everything was censored or what would go through like a panel of Smelly beardos who would then say this is morally. Okay, and this is not morally Okay, they would like, take these markers and like basically blacken out Veronica and Betty's arms in Archie's comics So you find Archie's comics, but they're all fucking All that's all a marker it out.

[00:13:42] Raad Seraj: Oh, you can see the belly. Oh mark it out, right? That's fucking crazy. But when I went to Bangladesh, it was the first time that I, the whole world opened up and, sure. For good and bad, piracy was its peak, and because of piracy, the good thing was music was always on a buffet.

[00:13:56] Raad Seraj: Anything you want to listen to, any art you want. And I remember just picking up... Lateralus by Tool. It was, it was like a shitty CD cover, a CD cover, and the cover was printed with a, an inkjet printer. And you could even tell, you could even make out the title. But I was like, there's something weird about this one.

[00:14:15] Raad Seraj: And I listened to it. It's a 75 minute long album. And I did not get it at all because the songs were 13 minutes long. I'm like, but it's one of those things where I listened to it more and to this day, I think that album changed my life completely because it was a different way to process anger.

[00:14:33] Raad Seraj: Yes, all these things. And so it's like it's a positive manifestation of how you could at these emotions, especially at a time when nothing seems to make sense. And everything's messed up and confusing. One more question about your sister. Obviously, you guys, you said you live in a troubled neighborhood.

[00:14:50] Raad Seraj: There's a lot of violence and A lot of trouble there looking back. Does it make sense the way you turned out and the way your sister turned out? Can you draw a wiggly line all the way back to the people you were back then? 

[00:15:04] Sabba Nazhand: Yes, absolutely. We both, I think as a back story and, maybe we can touch on this, but because of this, I want to go fast forward for a second because it's relevant, but as I got older the rage of how I felt, the anger and watching my parents.

[00:15:23] Sabba Nazhand: Go through like literal hell as they watched the news, watched TV on how their culture and their home was crumbling in front of them. I too immersed myself in news and foreign policies and how governments interacted with countries. And it all felt unfair and sad. Actually, there was a point where I thought I was going to go into foreign policy because I wanted to quote unquote, save the fucking world.

[00:15:44] Sabba Nazhand: And and my sister was the same way. She went to school and was. Sorry, during school, she volunteered with like local political candidates and really immersed herself in politics early on before switching into art, which I think was the right move. But, and for me, it was like, I did the different approach.

[00:16:06] Sabba Nazhand: News made me depressed. Foreign policies made me depressed and I wanted nothing to do with it because I felt that this is a huge conspiracy against the common people. And so going back, there's very. Direct I guess indirect correlation of I still am obsessed with hip hop. And that has gone along with me throughout my journey in my life.

[00:16:29] Sabba Nazhand: And my sister, she is in the arts. She didn't really listen to hip hop. She was more into like pop Madonna. And you can see that, right? Like she's into house music and techno and pop and is in the arts and I'm in, I still listen to hip hop and. It's interesting because that's where I was immersed in that and she was immersed into kind of a different world or different culture in the same neighborhood.

[00:16:54] Raad Seraj: We're going to come back to this. So moving forward into what, how you've been spending, let's just say your adult life and how you're professionally involved. You said in your bio that you're a self made tech executive. Now self made, I think can mean a lot of things.

[00:17:11] Raad Seraj: People will say, Kylie Jenner is a self made billionaire, which you know what will not go there, but I think I'm trying to illustrate that self made could mean a lot of different things, depending on who has to use the term and who gets to. Perceive what self made looks like. Given everything you just shared, what does self made technology executive mean?

[00:17:33] Sabba Nazhand: That's a great, that's a great question. Deep question. So there's two things we grew up poor. Like my parents had to start over, like it was the classic. We came here with nothing. And my sister paid herself through school, through loans and working. We've had this weird relationship with money for my, I still have a weird relationship with money because of my upbringing.

[00:17:55] Sabba Nazhand: And when I say self made, I saw the struggles of how my parents were living when I got older. I saw that they were always in I, experience them and always being in survival mode as immigrants come into this country. They built themselves up to have a kind of a very comfortable middle class life, but they still, till this day, live in survival mode.

[00:18:16] Sabba Nazhand: And I noticed that it's always like, when do you get the next paycheck? How do you feed us and pay the bills? So That to me was ingrained in me, it was ingrained, it still is, and I had a really terrible relationship with it because I didn't know what it meant, but I just knew that I had to make money, and I didn't have the right guidance, whether you can blame my parents or myself or our environment, but I didn't understand the value of education at the time, I didn't understand the value of how to, maybe go to school and then build something from it and then get a traditional job.

[00:18:53] Sabba Nazhand: I dropped out of college and I'm a proud now. I am a proud college dropout and we could talk about, we can go deep with that of why I used to not be proud of that, but I think, but I'm a proud college dropout and. I decided to go into the workforce and make money and that to me was this massive grind of questioning everything like what am I doing?

[00:19:16] Sabba Nazhand: I'm a loser. I'm not educated. I'm just like randomly working jobs. I'm, I forced myself into sales, which I love now, but I forced myself into sales because I didn't know what else to do at the time. I just knew I wanted to make money and that grit and perseverance and really just fighting through those demons and negative thoughts pushed me into this realm as a tech executive of wow the stuff that I did back then has molded was the foundation of who I am now as a tech executive and I would never change it for anything I would never replace it for anything else because the value of the dollar is so important to me, the value of hard work and the classic immigrant chip on their shoulder has gotten me to where I am today.

[00:20:01] Sabba Nazhand: So that's why I consider myself self made. My parents, they supported me with love and food and and a roof over our heads. And. I did everything else on my own. I self educated. I figured it out. I got my ass beat in an environment where either at the time, now it's a little better, but at the time you had to have a college degree for most jobs.

[00:20:20] Sabba Nazhand: I lied my way through it because I didn't know what else to do. Or, I interviewed so well, and I told my employers this is what I'm going to bring to the table. And they were so impressed that they decided that the education didn't matter. And I eventually became so good at what I did, I eventually had the experience under my belt, which negated the the degree and put me in this space of, now my background speaks for itself.

[00:20:45] Raad Seraj: I love everything you described and the way you described it there is something to be said about having, pride so proud.

[00:20:52] Raad Seraj: This particular work, but the fact that I'm giving it my all and it's a job and I know what purpose This particular job plays in my life at this time. It's a paycheck. It's the money that I need and that's it You know, I remember my first gig When I moved to Canada when I was 19 for university, I had enough money just to last for a year, and I worked at a really terrible, there's nothing with a falafel shop, but this fucking falafel shop was fucking terrible, it was just fucking owner was like, if you do a 5 hour shift you get a sandwich, if you do an 8 hour shift you get a whole meal, I'm like, why can't I just have a whole meal? 

[00:21:28] Raad Seraj: It was money under the table too, so he paid me less than minimum wage, but at that time it didn't matter.

[00:21:32] Raad Seraj: Honestly, it didn't matter at all. But to me, it was still fun because you know what? Everybody behind the counter and I was, I washed dishes basically. I washed dishes, I'd take out the grease and mop the floors and stuff like that. But you know what? Everybody behind the counter was, they were all immigrants, they were all working hard.

[00:21:49] Raad Seraj: Some of them were dicks, that's how it, that would have happened regardless. It's not like you work in a nice white collar job and nobody's an asshole, it's, but everybody was, we're laughing, they were smiling. They were like, despite it all. I think that's like the beauty of it all.

[00:22:02] Raad Seraj: When you do work hard the moments that are that shine through that where you do laugh. It feels like you deserve it. It feels like I earned this. I earned this. I earned this, this moment with my, coworkers having a drink or whatever. So I think that's really cool.

[00:22:19] Raad Seraj: So coming to technology, you've been in software and SAAS for a long time. Given how you described your your grit and the way you became self made and you are self made, why does tech and SAAS, why does this domain, feel like the domain you want to play in and you're most effective at.

[00:22:37] Sabba Nazhand: Yeah. So first of all, one it's, I almost have 20 years of experience in this. So it's, I can, this domain to me feels just, it's a part of my life. For better or worse I don't care what people say, like job and purpose matters. And whatever that means, it matters. It matters to wake up every day and have purpose of what you're doing, because you're spending a lot of time working.

[00:22:59] Sabba Nazhand: So in that regard it's just, it's part of my DNA. But I think in a opportunity as an opportunistic approach, look, we live in a innovative society and technology has driven growth, efficiency, success. In almost every industry that you can think of. And that to me is just, I nerd out on that. I love that.

[00:23:21] Sabba Nazhand: I love the idea of taking an emerging market, which we can talk about, or a antiquated system model and creating a technological model that makes it more efficient. Faster, not necessarily easier, but it gets you to from A to B in a matter where you can have maybe a less points of error. And that to me is just very exciting.

[00:23:48] Sabba Nazhand: And that's why I do what I do. And 

[00:23:52] Raad Seraj: what would you say is the... The core tenets of how you work in technology as an executive, as a team leader, as somebody who hires people, mentors people, and then how does that apply across the world in different places that you've, been an executive? So you mentioned Hong Kong, London and New York, some of those sites.

[00:24:12] Sabba Nazhand: That's a great question. So for me, there's texts and lectures and books around what the essence of the leader is, especially in tech I try to break it down into probably six there's kind of six areas that I've six traits that I think are extremely important in a leader, especially in tech and which has also followed me in my life and I've had some eyeopening correlations with my psychedelic journeys around these same six. It was this aha moment of Oh shit, this six, these six traits that I've been thinking about and how I've been, massaging to make it the perfect kind of model also is part of my mental health and my other aspects of my life.

[00:24:56] Sabba Nazhand: So let me explain. There's communication, there's trustworthiness, there's optimism, self awareness, deeply empathetic, and doing hard things. If you think about that's again, you can argue this, but those are the six traits that you need to be as an executive, as a leader in tech or any kind of industry.

[00:25:16] Sabba Nazhand: But then if you take that and just. For all intents and purposes, copy and paste it into life, you need those as well. And I've had profound experiences in my meditations and in my journeys where these six traits have come up similarly. 

[00:25:30] Raad Seraj: I totally agree with you with the six that you mentioned. I think the ones that particularly resonated with me is doing hard things, self awareness, and empathy. Yes. Yes. I often say that, it's not that people don't want to push themselves. I feel like they don't often feel either safe or supported.

[00:25:47] Raad Seraj: And if you have a safe place, people do often want to do the hard thing. They do want to say, they know there's something. That they can rise to the occasion. There's a saying, right? Like you don't rise to the occasion as much as you sink to the level of your training so I think people do want to do that, but again, don't have somebody, who they can trust or they don't feel safe and so on tech.

[00:26:10] Raad Seraj: This is not just about tech, but I do feel, in the innovation economy that we live in now, where technology is at the frontier of change in a way, like it's either ushering change or it is behind the change right behind the changes facilitating it. It feels like we've gone through a couple of iterations of what good leadership looks like, or what good companies look like.

[00:26:30] Raad Seraj: Yes. Especially right now, as we go through the recession, we've seen how companies were behaving, or raising money, or how investors were behaving two years ago. And not just investors, people in general, but now we're in this sort of for the lack of a better word, VC winter, and then of course what happened with Silicon Valley Bank.

[00:26:48] Raad Seraj: Yeah. Where do you think these values are as tenants of leadership at this point in time? And we're like, how have they evolved to come to this place? 

[00:26:57] Sabba Nazhand: So you're starting to see a big shift into conscious leadership. I know that's a widely used cliched term, but it's really true. And you're seeing that with people either forced into that situation because you have no when something like SVB happens and you can't pay your employees, you can't, you have to feel empathy and self awareness to know that shit, like my, my, the livelihood of these people is in my hands. And it's a whole different story if you don't feel empathy and are self aware, like we can go down that rabbit hole, but sometimes you're forced into situations to think more consciously as a leader or as an executive in tech.

[00:27:38] Sabba Nazhand: And then other times. You have these profound experiences in life that makes you question the status quo of what it means to be an executive leader, right? Ten years ago, even five years ago, being empathetic didn't mean shit. It was like, look, I'm paying you, do your fucking job, and do it great and I'm holding you accountable, and if you don't, I'm firing you.

[00:27:56] Sabba Nazhand: And you treated people that way, and a lot of people still do. But now you're starting to see that, not just for me personally, but other executives. As cheesy as this sounds, when you provide someone a space, safe space, and you lead with love, they will ultimately have the courage to do the hard things, hold themselves accountable and most importantly, if they fail, they will not be scared to own up to it.

[00:28:18] Sabba Nazhand: And when you create an environment like that in life and in leadership or in your company, then you are putting a team, you are assembling a team of people that are going to do the hardest fucking things for you and they're going to want to do it. And yes, you can think of it as a selfish way that you're building this.

[00:28:35] Sabba Nazhand: But at the same time, like people want to help each other. People are connected to each other. And if you give them that environment, they're going to do great things. Like nothing is more demoralizing for people you're leading than for them to feel like when they fail, they get fired or reprimanded. I don't ever want that.

[00:28:52] Sabba Nazhand: I stopped having that mindset. And I think from my perspective, if you start leading that way, you start building companies that way, you start bringing in, you're seeing these conscious VCs, you're seeing these conscious leaders that are thinking in this manner, you are going to create an environment that is going to breed success.

[00:29:10] Raad Seraj: Very well said. I couldn't agree with you more. And I, what is very encouraging to me, and perhaps this happens faster in technology and software, particularly because it's incredibly competitive and software the speed of iteration is so much faster.

[00:29:26] Raad Seraj: And I think there's this understanding that technology will take us so far, but really at the day, it's the human ingenuity behind it all. Whatever team you're on, whether you're on support, whether you're in sales, whether you're on build teams, design, engineering. How do you enable and empower people to do their best and lower the cognitive load of doubt and hesitation?

[00:29:48] Raad Seraj: I think the best leaders bring out the best in people and it's very cool to see. The best teams are where actually you are able to fail.

[00:29:55] Raad Seraj: The question is, are you learning from it? That's really where it is. And if you are failing and learning, then yeah, by all means fail. Yeah, there is something to be said though. Act fast and break things or yes, Mark Zuckerberg used to say, I think when you apply to technology companies that are that big and touch that many components of life and dimensions of life from governments for the infrastructure to politics, it's a little different, but I think in general I couldn't agree with you more.

[00:30:24] Raad Seraj: Let's switch gears because, I want to know where did plant medicines and psychedelics come into the picture? 

[00:30:31] Sabba Nazhand: I'd say if you go back five to almost seven years ago, I was dabbling, like most people my age, I was taking drugs recreationally, and I started dabbling into, mushrooms and other psychedelics, and, but it wasn't profound, it was just fun, recreational, and what's interesting is, I feel like I need to share this.

[00:30:53] Sabba Nazhand: Quick story to, and then come forward is for most of my life, I mentioned, I lived this like rage and disdain for my Iranian culture, my heritage, religion, my family, like the way life was, that was like Sabba during the day, this angry fucking Persian kid that just was pissed off at everybody.

[00:31:15] Sabba Nazhand: And then at nighttime. There was this kind of shift, and the shift was that I would lock myself in my room, and I would spend my nights listening to like Native American ceremonial music, religious chants, and I would cry, and I would listen to lectures on metaphysics and read poems from Hafez and Rumi, but that shit was so confusing to me, I couldn't process like the depth and beauty of what I was listening and reading, but I knew that I had this there was this deeper connection with life and the universe and spirituality that I Just couldn't wrap my head around and then wake up in the morning and then rinse and repeat.

[00:31:50] Sabba Nazhand: So again, so five, seven years ago, there was this dabbling and I didn't really understand it come around 2019 right before the pandemic. Living in New York City. the grind of being at a startup tech executive, I started questioning like a lot of things. Like I just didn't, I felt like I was just a shell of myself and traditional therapy opened that up for me a little bit, but I just felt like almost in a depressive state of who am I, what the fuck am I doing?

[00:32:19] Sabba Nazhand: Am I going to just continue down this path? I don't even know what love is. If you were to ask me what love was, I couldn't explain it to you. I'll give you some like just some bullshit like hallmark definition of what love was. And it all came crashing down on me. And having a wife and family and a kid on the way I felt like I needed to make a change.

[00:32:40] Sabba Nazhand: So it started with therapy. That opened up the first few layers of my consciousness and what, like, why do I think the way I think, why did I do the things that I did and connecting the dots and then that turned into breath work, meditation, and that shifted into, the multiple years of reading and studying and learning about psychedelics and It was this time of course, like pandemic, you hear this quite a bit, but in the pandemic, I knew that I had to make a change.

[00:33:12] Sabba Nazhand: I knew that I wanted to be a different version of myself. I have a son on the way. And it's I can't live this life anymore. I want to show up to be a better version of myself, a better husband, a better partner, a better father, son, brother, et cetera. And leader, et cetera. And my first kind of official, if you will, foray into psychedelics was the summer of 2020, where I sat with Bufo.

[00:33:37] Sabba Nazhand: And yeah, I got, there's a cautionary tale here, but I got blasted into the universe. And for me, that was that moment where I even said this out loud, I remember the healer told me, she said, she kept saying that I was repeating, or she told me that I was repeating I've been waiting for this my whole life, I've been waiting for this my whole life, multiple times, and that oneness, that connectedness of getting shattered and feeling, I felt the creation of the universe, I knew that there was this Deeper, more spiritual path for me in life.

[00:34:12] Sabba Nazhand: And that was that moment. And where my, I shifted from being an atheist who had a disdain for religion to, I don't know who I am or what I am, but I do know that there's this beautiful, spiritual God, universal thing out there which I'm still working through, but it shifted from God is bad.

[00:34:31] Sabba Nazhand: Religion is bad. That's all bullshit. It's all man made to like. Wait a second, right? And that to me was the most profound. I've had many, but that was so profound to me that connecting the fact that like the spirituality was always in me and it came out in a way that was so explosive and just profusely crying and laughing and crying and laughing after that session was, it was incredible.

[00:34:58] Sabba Nazhand: And I can go into more details, but that was the first and most, The most profound, I would say psychedelic experience that I had. 

[00:35:04] Raad Seraj: I think the first time you told me that story, I was like, whoa, Bufo, the very first move. Yeah, I know. Everybody says that. I worked my way to Bufo.

[00:35:13] Raad Seraj: It was yeah. 5 MEO DMT, it's not a joke. It's so extremely powerful. And it's yeah. So how did you find the guide that you worked with, and what did you know of Bufo before you you went in? 

[00:35:27] Sabba Nazhand: So this is, yeah, so this is where my cautionary tale comes in I'm not, I don't want to make this story of oh, make sure you do all this shit, but I think it's, I feel like I'd be doing people a disservice if I didn't talk about this, and you'll obviously understand and resonate here, but I what did I know about 5 MeO?

[00:35:47] Sabba Nazhand: Nothing. I had done some homework. So I knew what this molecule was and I knew that it was mainly in, in toad venom and then in some plants. So I had done a little bit of homework. I've done some research, but there wasn't a lot of stuff out there. I found this healer of all places, fucking Instagram, man.

[00:36:06] Sabba Nazhand: And I know it's like most embarrassing to talk about it. But I found it through like various connections or like mutual followers and I did my homework and saw that they had were connected to some people that I respected and trusted. I was like, okay like I said, at this point, I was like, fuck it.

[00:36:21] Sabba Nazhand: I'm just gonna reach out and see what happens. So I reached out and the Cautionary tale was that there was beautiful intention. It was a, for the most part, a really good set and setting. It was, though it was in the middle of New York City, it was in a beautiful apartment. And again, great intentions.

[00:36:41] Sabba Nazhand: What stood out to me was I fucking did it. They gave me a hug and they're like, have a nice day. And I'm standing in the middle of fucking Manhattan on 21st street and looking around. I'm like what the fuck do I do now? And it's wait, I, so you're just going to shatter me into the universe and then throw me back into the matrix.

[00:36:59] Sabba Nazhand: Like what now? And I didn't know how to process that, obviously. And especially someone who was like new to this type of these powerful molecules and so I don't know what to do with that information. So I walked home, it was a 45 minute walk and I just walked and the beauty of that walk was it was during gay pride and there was this one aspect of me like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

[00:37:22] Sabba Nazhand: Like all these happy people and crowds and this other part, I felt claustrophobic. I was like, I just want to be alone. I just want to sit with what happened. Yeah, it's the next day I took off work and that and the next week I'm the best way I can explain it next two Weeks was like I felt like I was just Disassociated from the world and from the people from in one regard.

[00:37:41] Sabba Nazhand: I loved it. In other words I was like what the fuck did I just go through? So my cautionary tale is like Fucking do integration like that is so important like psychedelics are just these molecules are a tool. They're not going to heal you It's what you do after the fact right and that to me was like, okay I need to I need to take this more seriously and luckily, like I had some trusted people and folks in the community that helped me understand integrating and Talk to some people and then decided after that like I should like really find the right environment to send setting the right healers that are going to, not only provide the medicine, but also help me integrate.

[00:38:18] Sabba Nazhand: So that's my cautionary tale of and then how that happened. So after that, I just decided that I'm, and that became, almost every six months I was sitting with medicine Since then and with plant medicine and now I, the integration part is so important. The other aspects that I do outside of the ceremonies and journeys are what I believe are the most important aspects.

[00:38:39] Sabba Nazhand: And I'm not perfect by any means, but I still hold on to that the importance of integration and what you do after the fact. 

[00:38:47] Raad Seraj: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I think integration is very often under looked and under appreciated because people are very obsessed with the inflection the physical and the emotional shift Yes at the time of but really if you're just chasing that feeling, you know Nothing in your life alters because we all have to come back to the sort of ever present life We live in whether yeah, whatever version of the matrix you fit in.

[00:39:10] Raad Seraj: It's still there. Yeah. Yes come back to it But you can alter You're waking life. If you do integrate, understand, what do I not do with this sort of opening? I found myself in, whether it's emotionally, whether it's whatever way, with five of me, it's really interesting because I find that it's a, it's an energetic release of some sort.

[00:39:28] Raad Seraj: And that sounds really hokey and, kind of cliche, but I think that's exactly it for me. It was a deeply physiological, psychological. response a very terrifying feeling. Yes. But I think afterwards and to this day, six years on, I think what I still feel is that a lot of times rage and pain are not things you can intellectualize and you can attribute to a particular thing or a particular moment.

[00:39:54] Raad Seraj: It just sits in your body, right? And it's almost like you have to shake it off. And Only when it's gone, do you feel like, Oh shit, there was something there the whole time. Yes. Yes. But of course I didn't know it because I had no sense of awareness about it. Correct. But yeah, to this point, I think, yeah, cautionary tale, for a good reason, if anyone's listening to this and is curious about 5 MEO, or whatever medicine you want to work with, integration is key. 

[00:40:19] Sabba Nazhand: Or whatever, I, absolutely, I'm happy, whoever wants to reach out to me, please do, and I'm happy to help there, but Yeah, I do agree with the release of energy. It was like, I had moments of that. And now that you say it as well, it's just get this shit out of me.

[00:40:33] Sabba Nazhand: Like this darkness, heavy feeling. And it's not very visual, at least for me, it wasn't, but it felt this like dark, almost when a TV is static, you, I was like, get it out. I need this out of me and you, and I almost felt it like this static coming out of my body, this energy that you mentioned. So I, yeah, thanks for bringing that 

[00:40:51] Sabba Nazhand: up. 

[00:40:51] Raad Seraj: And you can't I don't know about you, but like I had no chance to even say, Oh, hold on. Let me strap in. Nope. Yeah. 

[00:40:57] Raad Seraj: No, there's no, yeah. Good luck. You don't get a seatbelt. You just go exactly. Exactly. Okay. So I'm curious now to, you and I met last year at a wonderland in Miami.

[00:41:08] Raad Seraj: Obviously I think I shared a lot about our upbringing and what sort of brought us to this work and hopefully what roles we want to play in this, emerging ecosystem. As somebody who came from the outside walking in I want to say outside I don't necessarily mean somebody who's not spiritual.

[00:41:26] Raad Seraj: More like we come from things like tech and yes, It's the space is predominantly still very white very middle Yes in upper middle class in the in the in the sense that you know you try all these medicines you go to retreats and things like that. None of those none of which are very cheap exactly so I mean coming into it as an outsider.

[00:41:46] Raad Seraj: What do you notice? Are the good, bad, and the uglies of this space that exists today. 

[00:41:54] Sabba Nazhand: Oh, wow. So this is going to be on the podcast, huh? Okay. So I should 

[00:41:58] Raad Seraj: Hey man, I've said enough shit about this space. It's time you get in with me. All right. Yeah, 

[00:42:03] Sabba Nazhand: I'm getting in the, I'm getting in the water with you, man.

[00:42:05] Sabba Nazhand: Don't worry. No, I, we've talked about this a little bit, like good, bad, and ugly, right? There's what I quickly came, I, Okay. Let me back up when I decided that I wanted to focus in this space and, bring my talents to it. Sound like LeBron James, but I'm going to use that as my tag, LeBron James of the psychedelic community and tech.

[00:42:24] Sabba Nazhand: Oh God. I'm joking. You can take that out. So yeah, please. So the, what I saw was these like pockets of communities, mindsets, and people and specifically at Wonderland. But just in this, now that I've been, doing advising work and working in this space is, you have the, And there's no particular orders, what pops in my head, you got the people that came from the cannabis space that are like opportunistic looking for the next big like drug innovation mindset, which I have a ton of opinions on some good, some bad.

[00:42:59] Sabba Nazhand: I know some really amazing people from that space. And I know some people that are just like looking to Fucking sell gummies and then call it a day and that to me is like great if that's what you want to do there's more to this the space than that in my opinion Then you have the healers and the people that like That I had a few amazing journeys and now they want to save the world and are either think they're shamans or you know They, they're trying to figure out how to play in this space.

[00:43:26] Sabba Nazhand: And then you have the traditional heroes, the healers, the psychother, the psychotherapists, and those folks that are doing some amazing work and want to get involved. I love that. You have the VCs, and then you have people that are just. Super privileged, have a bunch of fucking money, and because they go to Burning Man and because they've done a bunch of psychedelic experience they think that they can come in and start a company and flourish and be highly successful.

[00:43:53] Sabba Nazhand: That to me is like the buckets that stood out to me, and that kind of falls into the good, bad, and ugly. I reflected on this a lot. At first I was like, A bunch of assholes whatever, a bunch of rich white people that are coming in here. Then I realized that, look, yes, everybody, there are these types of folks in this space and they're in a lot of the spaces in other industries.

[00:44:12] Sabba Nazhand: Then I thought this is an emerging market. What happens in an emerging market? You've got the kind of the big players, you've got the people that come in and decide that they're like the, at the, the forefront of some kind of innovation. And then you have people who genuinely care and I was like, okay an emerging market, you're going to have people that are going to come and fail, you're going to learn from those failures and hopefully get better and innovate.

[00:44:35] Sabba Nazhand: And that to me was like this eye opening moment of what can I bring? What does this industry, if you will What does this industry need? And it's bringing efficiency and understanding how to run a business. And I think that is a big component of it because you have people with vision and passion and even money, but don't know how to effectively run a business.

[00:44:57] Sabba Nazhand: We can insert, this past few weeks, there's been a few organizations that have shit the bed and right. And when you read about it and even look into it wait, these are some. Some of them are probably out. Some of these things were out of their control, but there are some things that they did poorly as a business as running a business that could have been prevented.

[00:45:15] Sabba Nazhand: And if you can educate some folks that are maybe again, passionate, but don't know how to run a business, then you can help build a hopefully a functioning, thriving ecosystem within this market. 

[00:45:29] Raad Seraj: I'm often very snarky, but I find it's not to, deride anybody.

[00:45:34] Raad Seraj: It's not to diminish anyone's efforts. It's more to be self aware because I think the, what I love about this space is it's on one hand full of incredible possibilities. And for the most part, people who come to this space are, they've come to it from a point of healing and some level of personal work that they've done.

[00:45:57] Raad Seraj: So it's rooted in some sort of experience, which is unlike any other space I've been in, on the other hand, it is completely wacky in terms of the characters that you need, all the buckets you mentioned. I think with psychedelics as well, it's oh, I licked a toad. Now I'm amazing and I can heal the world and I will totally five people and it will solve poverty.

[00:46:19] Raad Seraj: It's awesome. There's a bit of that, right? And the thing is, it's all part of it. And that's the way it's that's been my learning is that accepted for what it is. And then find ways to make it better, because that's all we can do. It's easy to criticize from a distance. It's easy to criticize, and be cynical.

[00:46:35] Raad Seraj: But I think it's a lot harder to actually step in and go this is how I'm going to help. And I think particularly this time that we're in, there's like a vibrant community in the underground. They're the reason why we still have this space. Let's not forget despite 50 years of criminalization and stigmatization, we still have something.

[00:46:54] Raad Seraj: Because the anything over surface was basically destroyed or, criminalized. But then now you have a burgeoning overgrown ecosystem as well, which is finance folks. And then you have business leaders, you have CEOs, you have founders. How do you bridge both?

[00:47:07] Raad Seraj: Because we need the wisdom. Of what we will learn, not only 50 years ago or the last 50 years, but also thousands of years ago, and how we are connected to a new way of doing business. But also, let's not reinvent the wheel. A lot of the problems that businesses in this space. Face are the same issues that any other startup faces at 

[00:47:29] Sabba Nazhand: 100. You're absolutely right. 

[00:47:31] Raad Seraj: It's wacky. It's hilarious. This is why you need humor You got to laugh because yes, a lot of it doesn't make any fucking sense, but it's okay The world doesn't make sense right now. It's just simply a reflection of where we are as a species as a civilization perhaps. One last question.

[00:47:47] Raad Seraj: So let's bring it all together now. I think I did not touch on The strife and the suffering and the struggle of the Iranian diaspora at this particular time, because I want to save it till the very end because I have to go through like the journey of, who you are today and how you became that way.

[00:48:07] Raad Seraj: How are you and your, let's say your parents, your family, your Iranian community, Iranian American community, What does this particular moment in time feel like and from that, given the work you have done on yourself, given that the foundation of love and support you have from your family you have a second child coming to this world very soon any day now, how do you reconcile all these things and then what gives you hope?

[00:48:37] Sabba Nazhand: Oh it's take a moment here because even the. The question itself brings me, it brings a lot of emotion. What's happening now in Iran where, especially with the prevalence of social media, anytime there's some kind of huge event in the news, no matter what it is, social media is all over it, which I think is amazing. And one of the reasons why, you know, you. People outside of Iran know what's going on, but this shit's been going on since 1979, right?

[00:49:05] Sabba Nazhand: Like my parents, their generation, my generation have even that my parents, like before my parents have been going through this for decades. There's so much pain. And trauma in, in our culture because of what's happening in our country today because of the regime, because of the oppression and it's difficult.

[00:49:28] Sabba Nazhand: It's difficult to really grasp because my parents have gone through so much shit in their life and you can point it back to. What has happened in Iran and them leaving and you can point that to all the Iranians that have left because of that, right? And

[00:49:48] Sabba Nazhand: as I mentioned before I had this disdain for my culture because I didn't understand it I didn't understand because we left and I didn't know who I was and these last few years Have I've been gotten so connected to my Iranian culture, my blood, and it's been through plant medicine work and my journeys, like I feel the pain and I feel the trauma of my people and I am them.

[00:50:16] Sabba Nazhand: I am them. Generations of trauma, and it's in me. And now more than ever, my goal in life is to make sure that my son, my, and my daughter who's on the way. They grow up and understand the beauty of our culture. They grow up and understand the beauty of Iran and the thousands of years of history before this small, granted, it's only been what 40 something years that this has happened.

[00:50:44] Sabba Nazhand: This is just a small part of this beautiful, longstanding tradition of of Iran and Persia. And I want my kids to know that as much as they only, they know this part and that to me is where I'm seeing this like shift of what culture means, what heritage means. This shit's in my blood, man.

[00:51:04] Sabba Nazhand: I'm Iranian. I was born there. I can barely speak. I can speak, but I know who I am and I see it in my son's eyes. And that to me gives this level of you know what, we're going to get through this. Hopefully in this generation and people like my sister and the women of Iran who have who are being Tormented by this government are going to one day be free to be who they want to be and us Men, the men of Iran would not be here Nobody would be here without women, but the women of Iran are the power, are the everything, they are the mother of all mothers, when it comes from my perspective, when it comes to our culture.

[00:51:51] Sabba Nazhand: And that to me is like the world is starting to see what courage means and it's from the women of Iran. And that to me is you know what, out of darkness comes light. And. this darkness, you're starting to see this light come out of the power of our people. And one day we are going to, we will come out on top of this and take our country and our culture back.