Global advisor Csaba Lucas shares insights on peak performance, purpose, and regenerative change.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Csaba Lucas, a renowned business advisor and entrepreneur, on his unique journey blending tribal wisdom, regenerative technologies, and leadership strategy. From mentoring Wall Street leaders to reshaping modern entrepreneurship, Csaba delivers a profound look at what it truly means to lead.
About Csaba Lucas
Csaba Lucas is a distinguished business advisor and entrepreneur, celebrated for his expertise in regenerative technologies and transformative processes. With over thirty years of experience, his insights have graced esteemed publications, establishing him as a premier thought leader and sought-after speaker on peak performance. Globally recognized for his advisory and entrepreneurial stewardship, Csaba has guided Wall Street executives, Fortune 100 leaders, professional athletes, and celebrities, as well as individuals navigating significant challenges. His academic credentials span business, sports science, and performance arts, reflecting his multifaceted approach. Csaba’s unique experiences include living with tribes in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon and engaging with wisdom keepers from Siberia to Australia. This rich cultural tapestry informs his holistic advisory work, blending art, science, ancient wisdom, and business acumen. Driven by a passion for leading transformative change, Csaba Lucas remains a pivotal figure in shaping the future of business advising. His diverse expertise and deep dedication to mastering the art of living make him an invaluable mentor in the realms of cutting-edge technologies and entrepreneurial ventures.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Let’s welcome our next guest.
Alright, so Csaba Lucas is a business advisor and entrepreneur celebrated for his expertise in regenerative technologies and transformative processes. Uh, with over 30 years of experience, choppa has guided Wall Street executives, fortune 100 leaders, professional athletes, and celebrities. As well as individuals navigating significant challenges.
Csaba unique experiences include living with tribes in Sub-Saharan Africa, which I gotta ask you about that. Um, and the Amazon and engaging with wisdom keepers from Siberia to Australia driven by a passion for leading transformative change. Let’s give it up again for Csaba . Thank you. Thank you. I know this is the end of the day, so I’m gonna, let’s try to make it, you know, count.
Alright, so first thing, first when I, when I read your bio, when I was looking at some of your history and I think about some of your experiences, so Sub-Saharan Africa, Amazon, I don’t even know what wisdom keepers from Siberia means. Like what causes you to go out there and like and search for these other experiences?
That’s a good question. Thank you. Um, I grew up before ion changed in Eastern Europe. So I’m from Hungary originally, and once I had the good fortune to move over to North America, I realized, uh, in one moment what a different experience I had in a socialist, um, country versus a capitalist country. Um, an interesting story that there’s a gentleman who’s, who’s a Nobel Prize winning scientist.
Once he won Nobel Prize, he wanted to figure out what is happiness all about. So he went to Eastern Europe before the regime change. And he asked Eastern European housewives how happy they were, and a hundred percent of them gave the same answer, which is, I never thought about it before. Wow. Which, uh, as a capitalistic, you know, country and America, even in our constitution, it’s in there the right to, to, um, happiness and all that jets.
I was like, that’s interesting, right? Maybe happiness is not that important for human beings. And I start to wrap my mind around, well, the people are happy. They actually don’t try to be happy. They lead their lives in a particular way. And if you ask ’em, are you happy? They’re like, yeah, I am happy. All the people who focus on happiness, they usually not very happy.
So I was like, how would that be to look at drastically different cultures because let’s say socialism in Hungary, still white people’s Jazz America, it’s very much a. You know, the background is still a European wide sort of angle still. It doesn’t matter, you know, how much we dislike it, that it’s not more integrated.
Still there is that European is somehow. So I was like, what would that be? To look at a complete different way of looking at how to be a human being. So I knew that the Zue had the most ancient DNA from all human beings who existed it. So they are literally the direct descendants of the first homo sapien sapiens who ever left of it.
And uh, so it was like, it’d be interesting to see if I could spend some time with them. It took us about three months to, um, find a tribe that truly lived like a hunter together group. And, uh, I had the good fortune for spending a month with them, and I’ve been going back and forth for several decades, spending a lot of time, and they were kind enough to share their wisdom with me in sometimes awkward ways.
Um, what is that? That they believe matters how to be human? And it’s drastic different than what we know here. So I had the good fortune to do this in the middle of the Amazon and, you know, up in Siberia. It’s very simple. Most people, let’s say. Who drinks ayahuasca here in Los Angeles, right? They say, oh, a shaman gave me the ayahuasca.
My answer to that, anyone who calls themselves a shaman from the Amazon, they don’t know what they’re talking about because shamans only exist in Siberia. And this is what our world became. We are this over consumerized world. World, you know, where everything is a product, everything is to sell, you know?
And um, it’s very difficult to be human these days. Is there’s a cultural aspect of how to be a human and a human side, and that’s really what I learned from being exposed to such a drastically different cultures. If you live in one culture, you can’t tear them apart. Culture creates problems and challenges, and that’s not a bad thing, but it does create confusion and the humanity holds the answers to what really matters in life, you know?
So, yeah, that’s a long ass, no, no, no. Anything surprise you on these travels? I need some stories, man. You’re not getting off that easy. What, what surprised you about this? Okay, so I mean, I have a billion different surprises. I’ll gimme one. I’ll give you a, let’s see. Okay, so currently we live in a very interesting political world, right, where we have some leaders who, whatever they say, you not necessarily believe a hundred percent that is true and people get pissed off about it.
Okay. Um, the first time I spent with the Azi some significant amount of time, I remember that hunters came back and after a hunt, and everyone wanted to hear about the story, how, how was this hunting? And they’re like, oh my gosh. I mean, I had a translator at the beginning. I thought translators matter, so there was a translator.
Um, so the translator said, yeah, they’re saying that it was so difficult they took forever to, you know, hunt down this kudu and so on and so forth. And I’m like, okay, that’s fine. Now, there was so much meat that the next day there was no hunting. Next evening, everyone wanted to hear about the story again, so they’re like, oh, well the animal had a broken leg.
So it was one of the easiest hunt ever. I was like, did I misunderstand here Something? Is there missing something? I was like, okay, probably the translator, whatever. The third day, again, everyone wanted to hear about the story and they, they said a completely different story again. And I, it took me a long time to figure out, Adam, you know, what the heck was going on here.
Eventually I kind of did. Now, storytelling is a very interesting notion. If I tell you a story about, uh, taking a shower and I tell you how the shower system works and what is water and all that jazz, you will never get clean from it. Talking about something and experiencing something is two drastically different things.
And our world don’t understand this. We think too much about our chats and our talking and we taking ourselves too seriously. And we believe that has something to do with experience. Now, the Zui has, uh, a culture that goes back 200,000 years. Do you understand that our current culture in our western world is about 300 years old, but it comes to this scientific, materialistic world and worldview.
It’s a very, very juvenile culture. Not bad. It’s amazing. I love America. Um, and, and the western world, but it’s a very juvenile culture. They have a, a culture that goes back 200,000 years. There are cave drawings that is 70,000 years old, and they, they represent the words and the conversations that still today they have are on the campfire.
So a culture like this holds some really interesting wisdoms. So I was like, okay, so where is this coming from? Telling a story over and over, totally differently, and a culture like that where they understand that what happens if you try to describe the story, it make you more than others. It’s maybe good for you, but it’s not really good for other people.
Everyone is gonna start to feel weird about it. So they believe that while you were not at the hunt, so who cares about trying to explain it the way it happened? You won’t understand it. Experiencing is totally different. What matters? What is good for the tribe? What is good for all of us? I wanna inspire you to join me next time in the hunt.
If I keep repeating the same story, all of them, they will be pissed off at you that it’s boring. You already said this yesterday. It doesn’t inspire me to want to go hunt so that culture understands storytelling is about. Incentivizing an action that’s gonna be good for all of us. Some of our leaders today accidentally discover this and we connect to that because fictional stories are all about just one thing.
Get masters of people behind an idea. It’s nothing to do with truth or reality. No, none of that. It’s about getting people behind the story accidentally. Some people, um, uncover this. And they don’t necessarily use it for something that’s collectively, maybe good for everyone, but they understood this and that’s not a bad thing.
We need to examine that as a society. How are, what a tie test we are about lying. Maybe there’s something more to it, you know, that’s more human. These experiences that you’ve had, how does that fuel some of the work that you’re doing today? Whether it’s uh, wall Street executives, fortune 100 leaders, like how does all this connect?
You know, I, um, we are all human and if we don’t understand our humanity, we don’t understand what the heck we are doing The problems today, today is the most important thing for people to understand who they are and what makes them, what blows their hair back. Most people don’t pay attention. Um, people, let’s say historically, if someone back in the 15 hundreds, they didn’t spend time because they were busy going to the, you know, farming and all that, they didn’t have time to figure out who they were.
I. But that’s okay because no one really knew you better. No one knew your thoughts, your patterns better than you did. Today’s different. There are companies who are really invested into figuring you out, and if you don’t pay attention and they just learn a little bit more about you than you know about yourself, you become a slave.
Indeed, most of our world, the whole consumer world is all about slavery. And people don’t realize it. Everyone is slave. They’re thinking about, okay, it’s so important for me to have this shoe, that shoe, that car. I gotta work hard and all that. Well, if you look at humanity historically, this is complete bull.
Most people, the 117 billion you ever existed, we had an overwhelming sense of what’s human, what’s great quality. Most of us don’t practice this mostly because we are enslaved and we don’t even realize. So that, that, that’s why I’m like, foc. No, thank you. That’s why I’m trying to focus on, thank you. Um, I’m trying to focus on the human aspect of everything.
You know, I’m involved in tech, I am involved in more than third, you know, 30 different ventures very heavily. But I always focus on the human aspect of it all. Without that, we miss, we miss completely the boat. And we start to develop ventures that create unintended consequences. I don’t believe humans ever got out there.
I’m gonna screw this thing up. I’m gonna destroy the planet. I’m gonna, you know, overuse this resource. I don’t think that happened. Usually unintended consequences created the problem on planet earth and where, and I was starting to riff about this, okay, where do unintended consequences come from? And they’re coming from one simple source.
It’s people who don’t know what the heck they’re doing. So I’ll give you a great example that most of you guys first gonna roll your eyes thinking that, are you just gonna criticize Steve Jobs? And I’m like, I am going to, our world cannot afford more Steve Jobs or Zuckerbergs. And people who accidentally succeeded too early in life, they accidentally succeeded so early that they were not wise yet and they have too much power.
And just think about Steve Jobs. The guy created some amazing stuff, iPhones, blah, blah, blah. Right? It’s amazing. But how many things are we trying to mitigate to the society right now as an outcome of his inventions? He’s obviously was not a very nice partner, not a very nice boss, not a very good parent, not a very healthy individual.
He was great at creating some creative shit and all that stuff. All of his imbalances rippled into the stuff he created, which all of us right now is dealing with as a society. We cannot afford any more out of balance leaders creating systems that reaches the masses. So. So, so everything about business must be about humans.
We need to make sure that people are hiring differently than before. Just because you have a subject matter expertise and you’re a great CFO, that doesn’t mean you should work with a project that reaches the masses because your imbalance is potentially gonna ripple into everything you do, the service, the products, and all.
So on. Yeah. So if you don’t understand what really is human, how to recognize when someone is a balanced human being, or someone who’s aching and aiming for balance in their lives. Without that, it’s impossible to create ventures that not gonna have unintended consequences in the world. Let’s go deeper in that concept.
So for those that are out there that do have that bent or do wanna make a big difference in the world, like what are some things that they should be thinking about? I think maybe the. One of the easiest and most complicated thing at the same time to figure out what is real and what is fiction. Most people don’t really, people don’t really think about what is real.
Real is whatever is going on right now and your five center mechanism can connect to it. Everything else is just a story. I have five kids and I have an amazing wife, and, but at this given moment, I cannot connect with them, so therefore, it’s a story. Um, anything that happened in the past, it, it’s, you don’t remember the way it happened.
You remember it the way how the story you told yourself while it was happening and now you remember the story. And every time when you think about the past or every time you think about the future, it’s just a story. It’s nothing else. Things can happen and there are some probable outcomes of the future and less probable.
But I bet you anything, I mean, we live here in la. And I have many friends who lived in the Palisades and I have conversations with them in December, and they share their heartache, their problems, the challenges they had. None of them had the speculation that, well, maybe everything is gonna burn down around me.
Yeah. You know, we, Westerners are so arrogant, believing that we got this under control. We have it all figured out. We are not, we don’t. If you don’t realize what is real and what is just a fiction, you oftentimes make decisions based on fiction versus reality. We suck at it so bad as Westerners. I don’t know how many of you meditated before, but when people first time they try to meditate, oftentimes they say, oh, Chaba, this is not for me.
I have too many things on my mind. Right? But it’s just basically, we are so incentivized to live in fiction as a consumer world. That you’re sucked into the future and into stories that you should have this so you become like that and so on and so forth, that we don’t even realize that we cannot even be in reality, understand what reality is.
We live in a constant state of, um, fiction, and then we believe that the past happened. This creates relationship problems as opposed to understanding that. Stuff happened, but you don’t know who was behind you when making faces, while someone’s laughing in front of you and you thought that, you know, they disliked you, you have no idea what really happened.
And if a story does not charge you up, allow you to show up the best way right now. You gotta find a way to change the story so you can be present right now, right here. Otherwise, otherwise you might, the fiction creates the stress response in your system. Which narrows your vision in the now, and you’re not gonna be able to see all the opportunities and everything that surrounds you.
Anyhow, I could talk about this forever. I’m gonna try to shut up.
So for you professionally, what are some, you know, on this journey, what are some of the things that have changed, you know, for yourself, let’s say now versus maybe 20 years ago? That’s, yeah, that’s a fantastic question. It’s, it really is, you know. 20 years ago, I was considered very successful when it comes to working athletes.
You know, I worked with the Lakers, I worked with bro Domo, players with all kinds of world champion athletes in figure skating, bodybuilding, weightlifting, all kind of jets. Um, but I kind of took whatever project made sense to me that brought in money. Right? As now I am on the other side of 50, I’m working on the second 50.
Um, I look at things differently. I have three very important points that every project I’m involved in has to ace. Number one, the venture upon success has got to create big enough ripple that it changes humanity for the better, number one. Number two, it needs to be with people. We, I would have to spend dinner every single night for the remaining of my life.
I should be fine with that. Number three, upon success, the venture needs to create big enough financial upsides so I can. Partake in redistributing wealth around the world in a way that is better for everyone. So these three points are very important to me, you know, and sometimes one of them is really hard and two are easy.
And then I have to be diligent not to get behind that because you have a, you know, after 30 plus years of working, uh, six continents constantly, I have very big network and there’s a lot of opportunities and it’s really hard to decide. What type of footprint you wanna leave and how you wanna show up, you know?
So I’m trying to be very diligent about that. Now. It’s 20 years ago, I kind of did whatever was able to create success or money and stuff like that. Yeah. Alright, here’s my warning for my last question and then we’ll open it up to take a couple of questions from the audience. What kind of trends are you following right now with, with your experience, all the different, you know, countries you’ve been to?
Like what trends in business are exciting and or interesting to you right now? Oh, that’s a good one. Well, ai, hands down, most exciting thing and the most dangerous thing. The problem is, um, AI currently is operating like, um, you know, when you merge to drive a car, what do they say They say? Here is the break.
You know how it works and yes, okay, this is the gas. Careful with that, right? AI is not working like that. AI is like everybody’s racing. Let’s fucking go and let’s see what’s gonna happen. And then the break. Yeah, the break is, uh, we haven’t figured it out yet. So as a society we need to figure out what is the break, what are the, what are the parameters that AI should be working?
Through, if we don’t pay attention, this powerful intelligence, which is the first intelligence that not organic in our existence as the universe as far as we understand it, every life form is organic. AI is an intelligence that is non-organic, operates differently. We gotta be so careful because it’s so fast.
Even the most basic ais like algorithms, right? They’re a very basic form of ai. They created already so much problems, right? So we have to be careful with it, but it can also create the most amazing things that humanity hasn’t seen since we left the Hunter Gather life. And I, I, um, I know that this is controversial.
Most people would think that hunter together life, that’s not that good. It’s actually really, really good. Interestingly enough, most people think it’s a really hard work. It’s really not. We are unbelievable hunter gatherers. As a species like superb, it’s very hard to comprehend how amazing we are. And Hunter gather tribes, they spend approximately 30 hours a week including hunting and gathering and taking care of the camp.
The rest is spending time with the loved ones and keeping a more balanced world. You know, we haven’t had that since we started to farm and all that jazz. We became this slave first through farming and then the industrial world, and now to other things. AI can potentially free us up if we do a good job.
So I am super excited about ai. All right, let’s, uh, let’s get some questions in. I love everything that you’re saying. Thank you so much. Brandy ba, transformational educator, intuitive counsel to diplomats around the world term technologist. After a car accident, brain injury, I learned a lot. Kind of like your transformational endeavors.
I have this theory that. Through Abundance and Wealth. My podcast is called, yes, real Abundance and Wealth. Brandy Vale Through everything I learned, I imagine manifestation to you is different than manifestation to me because of your comments about story. Everything that is the past or even in the future is story.
So what’s real is the current reality. So my question to you is what do you think about. The abundance theory on manifestation. And is it to see it in your mind’s eye and then activate it through your intentions? Or is it completely different? Great question. Thank you so much. Um, I would actually incentivize it to try to examine why are you asking this question first before thinking about manifestation?
What you wanna manifest? Maybe it doesn’t matter that much. The question is, what the heck do you wanna manifest? Period. You know, why does that matter? And usually when you ask this question, and not you individually, but when people ask this question, they usually want to have more stuff. Okay? So suddenly, if you start to examine, why do I wanna have more stuff?
Why is there that most cultures are out there believed, including Native Americans, that is native to this land, right? Um, they believe that if you have more than what you need, then you’re a dangerous individual for yourself and for everyone in the tribe. Hmm. So if your goal of trying to manifest because you want to have more abundance and more stuff around you, the question is more like, why do I wanna have that?
When most humans through history believe that’s a wrong thing to have, and that’s when you can catch yourself and, oh my gosh, I was enslaved by this consumer idea. Now I have this thesis that is not really proven. It’s my idea. It might be completely off, but I wanna share it with you guys if you don’t mind.
Which is the ammo of a juvenile culture is that what’s good for the individual who lives in that culture is not necessarily good for the society and whatever is good for society, the consumer society is not necessarily good for the individual. If there’s an ancient culture that had the time to develop rituals and traditions, they develop a system where whatever is good for an individual is good for the society and vice versa.
So we are in this very special moment in our society, this consumer scientific consumer world, a materialistic world that there hasn’t been enough time yet to develop those rituals and traditions. So it’s upon every single one of us to dig into our individual lives as these questions. So a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, there will be a more robust culture where the rituals and tradition will teach us how, what is the human menu?
Which right now no one is teaching us in our schools. I have five kids. I’m heavily involved in education for a very long time, from multiple different angles. I tell you, there’s those poor kids have no shot of learning anything at all. Not about physicality, not about psychology, nothing. You know? So we have to learn who we are.
Pay attention to that, ask the questions when ultimately a pod comes up, just. Ask that question, is that my thought? Or is that I was indoctrinated with a certain idea in a way that I’m just acting out a program? Who is that gonna help? You know? So I would start to riff on this and look at things as rabbit holes and put your phones down.
Uh, disconnect time to time and ponder and have deep conservation, uh, conversations with people so you can go deep down on those rabbit holes and through those deep searches. You uncover the etiology of this question, and maybe that matters much more than manifestation. Thank you so much. Thank you. How you doing?
Um, I’m a former professional basketball player and I mentor kids and I’m scaling stuff as well as a business person. And I tell my young people all the time, you know, you have to have a morning and night routine, something that starts you off to get you going. Something to compress what is your morning routine or night routine, if you mind sharing.
And did it change recently? Was it a. Connected to different moments in your life. Uh, how do you balance that? Oh, this is awesome question. You know, uh, the commonality between different cultures is that, um, people who live close to nature, they have predictable, um, sections and phases of their day. I identified not alone, but with the help of many different cultures, eight different stages of every cycle that exists.
These eight stages, very easy to connect to as a human being. We are wired for it. If you live close to nature, first thing in the morning, you wake up and probably most of you guys had a chance to absorb, observe the uh, sunrise. You have that sense of, ah, this is nice. This is something that’s so deeply engraved in us a long time ago when we lived in, you know, still in nature, all of us and the darkness always represented the danger.
And once the light came up, you know, for us, a kind of creatures that we are, it was always like, ah. Wonderful. Now the same thing you can explore when you have a child that is born into your life. I remember when I looked at every single one of my kids at the beginning, I’m like, oh my God, what an amazing thing.
I call this the East Energy, the every single thing. I believe that it starts with a level of inspiration, excitement, and that’s actually how every culture on the planet when they wake up first thing in the morning, it starts with that. So I try to mimic that system. I don’t want to pick up my phone first thing in the morning because you give away your chance of chemical.
Setting yourself up as a, as a human being. Um, but more like, okay, what inspires me? What excites me and honor that concept, honor that natural cycle, and then trying to honor throughout my entire day this system that is ever changing. You know? Um, you are African American. I’m white, I am evolved. To live in four seasons.
So my changes throughout the, the, the year drastically change is supposed to, you know, if you are born as a, as an African American, your DNA is more for a similar type of existence, more, you know, more than a European that, you know, my winter was very different than my summer, your winter, summer. You know, genetically, if you go back 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 generations, it was pretty much the same.
So we have to handle ourselves differently asking the questions, who am I without being politically correct, you know, but truly engaged to that matters and these cycles and everything kind of colored by that. So I know it’s not a straightforward answer, but I think it might, um, allow you to think about a system that might be very exciting, you know?
All right, last question and then we’re all gonna stick around too and uh, and have some fun. 10 Go for it. So, um, all of us here are mission driven, uh, entrepreneurs, uh, and we are very, we tend to be very idealistic about what we want to achieve in the world, make a difference, various levels. Um, and the for, for the, the ones that just got started are subjected to having to earn money.
To sustain all you want do as a resource. Right. So can you recount some, uh, a story of, you know, maybe early on in your career or your journey where, you know, you have to kind of power through these segments of not enough resources? Like Yeah, this is a good question. Um, so I have a quite multifaceted background when it comes to education.
I have a business degree, I have a anesthesiology degree, and I have a performance art degree. So I. Uh, the reason I’m bringing this up because I had the good fortune to delve into performance art a fair bit, and I remember working on really big films and tiny films where there was no budget and it was amazing for me to experience that with tiny projects, the creativity always stores and a big budget used sort of like doing what needs to be done.
Um, so just because you have little amount, if your mission is clear. You can find a way. I believe there’s always a way. I’ve seen so much throughout my life, entrepreneurs and people are, um, forgetting that we are up on, you know, on Mars that we went to the moon, right? That means even these absolutely insane things can happen.
Therefore, if you want to create a product that you believe in. It is possible to do. You just need to buckle down and pay attention and you will find your way. Just don’t stop. Someone earlier mentioned that the difference between succeeding versus not. The people who don’t succeed, they stop before they succeeded.
Simple as that. So I think there’s always a way, you know, always a way just don’t stop and keep being creative. And sometimes the biggest gift when you don’t have enough funds. If you have too much funds, sometimes everything gets flat, and that’s one important, I know we gotta go, but when it comes to ai, another interesting thing about this, it might just be one of the first ventures where Google, let’s say with all the money, it might be in disadvantage comparison to a small team with LI limited amount of sources, but major clarity, they might be able to create more worthwhile product.
Then a giant organization with a bunch of people working behind it. So don’t look at it as uh, a negative or a limitation, but more like a potential to turn your creativity on and see things that no one ever seen before. Alright, let’s give it up. Thank you so much.