Radha Agrawal, author and CEO of Daybreaker, is on a mission to help people feel happier. In this episode of David Siegel’s Keep Connected podcast, you’ll hear tips on activating positive brain chemicals, finding community, and making joy a daily practice.
In today’s episode of Keep Connected, you’ll meet Radha Agrawal whose goal is to help people experience joy more often. Pairing the glamour of nightlife with insights from neuroscience, Radha’s early-morning dance parties encourage participants to feel a healthy, natural buzz without drugs or alcohol. In this episode, Radha explains how to bio-hack happiness by activating the brain’s neurochemicals that stimulate joy. She’ll also explain why community and belonging are the first steps toward improving your well-being.
Ranked as one of the top 25 CEO podcasts on Feedspot, Keep Connected with Meetup CEO David Siegel is a podcast about the power of community. For more details on other episodes, visit Keep Connected on the Meetup Community Matters blog.
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Show Notes
In this episode, we talk to Radha Agrawal. She is an entrepreneur, Cofounder, CEO, Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, and also the author of Belong. We had a great time. She had great energy. She is someone who is changing the world. I think you’re going to love this episode. Happy reading.
We are lucky to have Radha Agrawal with us. I am appreciative of you taking the time. She is someone who is the Cofounder, CEO, Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, which we are going to learn about all the titles of Chief Community Architect, which is a movement with 500,000 people in 30 different cities. You’re changing people’s lives. You’ve written a book called Belong. I’m sure there are many more books to come. We’re looking forward to learning from you. Thank you for joining. Keep connected.
Radha: Thank you for having me. I’m such a fan of Meetup, the ethos, values and the community that you’ve built. I’m excited to be in connection finally. I feel like we should have been collaborating all along. It’s good to be connected together.
This is the start of something hopefully more to come. Let’s talk about Daybreaker. I am an incredibly big believer in the power of body movement, yoga and chemistry that happens in one’s body. I’m looking forward to learning more, but rather than me sharing with people what Daybreaker is, I’d rather you share that and let’s get started with that.
Radha: Daybreaker started as a movement towards returning to yourself on the dance floor. Often in the world of nightlife or partying, you’re leading it yourself. Many years ago, we set out to create a movement that was all around returning to yourself by getting high on your own natural supply and training our community members how to do that. How do you harness your happier chemicals in your brain and do it in a way that’s fun? Historically, when you think about the space of mental health, it’s an intense space to be in. Our whole raison d’etre from the very beginning was how can we make it fun, accessible, and have all the ingredients that you would experience when you’re partying the nightlife, costumes, deejaying, music, aerialists, fire spinners, all the juice of nightlife, theater, glitz and glamor and the feeling of getting dressed and going out.
Initially, with the quiet mission of helping people return to their own and having their chemistry. The number of people, the thousand friends and committee members who have share that, “I feel like I’m this. I feel like I’m that. I can’t believe I’m high on myself. I’ve never danced sober before,” all of these things. The idea was fearful. Let’s replace all the darker ingredients of nightlife. The first thing was let’s make it from the night to the morning. We replaced the mean bouncer with a hugging committee. We replaced the alcohol with green juice, coffee and tea. We added performative elements, fire spinners, aerialists and horn sections in a whole array of theatrical pieces.
Let’s do it in the morning when our energy is the most full. On a weekday morning, before going to work so there’s an extra level of mischief and an extra level of that dopamine rush of getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get dressed, to go to our 6:00 AM morning weekday dance party at the Top of The World Trade Center, The Sydney Opera House or White House. We’re always finding the most mischievous, wildest locations to do them in to give people that sense of, “I could rethink the way I’m doing social, doing my life. I can still go to these wild places, radiate authentically who I am and practice that courageously.” That’s what we do here.
What we do collectively is help people courageously practice joy and how to connect with one another without substances in your hand. How people courageously return to their own self-expression to the dancer inside of them. When most people say, “I’m not a dancer,” to return to the dancer inside of you, that if you can walk, you can dance. There are so many of these limiting beliefs that we have as humans from since we were little kid to someone was laughing at you when you dance to a song or told you couldn’t sing or it was silly what you were wearing or whatever it was that we quieted those sides of us. We’re like, “Let’s return to our childlike state of wonder.”
There are many things that you said that I would love to riff on. I’ll throw a couple of riffs at you and then we can riff back and forth. The first is I read something which is that children, on average, laugh 100 times a day. Adults laugh on average, ten times a day. One sad reality is why don’t people have that joy and that laughter more? How do we get back to our childlike self to be able not to feel judged and be our authentic self? That’s exactly what you described. That’s one thought that I had. The second is the concept you talked about at the beginning around taking care of ourselves first before necessarily be able to take care of others, the whole oxygen mask analogy, especially parents.
I’m a parent of teenagers and you’re a parent of young ones. Parents don’t put that oxygen mask and take care of themselves first, and then they’re depleted, then they’re burnt. One of the things you also talked about is being one’s authentic self. I have personally always believed that people are most unhappy. One of the greatest causes of unhappiness is when you can’t be your authentic self. What you described about Daybreaker and people are being themselves and not worry about how they’re being judged, not worrying about how they’re being perceived, and being out there. It’s healthy. Hopefully, that then translates into every other aspect of their life. It’s not just during that two-hour time period. You are obviously an inspiration to many people, including myself. How did you become you? What motivates you around community and helping people? Where does that come from?
Radha: To your point, with Meetup, you are as good as the five closest friends you keep. That’s my mantra for life. I’m half-Japanese, half-Indian, Asian-minded and must succeed, investment banker out of college, the whole thing. Going from that sort of ethos, checking all the boxes, and getting all of that out of my system, all that is preconditioning out of my system and focusing on community first, that I think was the biggest contributor to who I am. Going from the space of needing to achieve, feeling validated by my parents, my community, everyone around me, and the society around me to then having this moment where I felt deeply alone in my 30s, of achieving but empty and then moving towards this real deep focus on friendship, community, relationship and connection like what you do at Meetup. That’s why I’m such a fan of you and all the work that you do with Meetup. I don’t know if you read my book. The first page of it is like, “When I turned 30, I woke up and I was like, ‘I don’t belong here. Who am I?’”
What’s inspirational is that too often, people that are in their 30s feel like, “I already am who I am.” That’s sad. If you’re 80, you shouldn’t feel like you are who you are, let alone if you’re 30. It’s an inspiration because you could’ve said, “At eighteen years old, I realized this, and then I decided to go away from the Indian-Japanese cultural parenting that I had been a part of.” You didn’t say that. It took you some time and through those years, I’m sure you became stronger and that helped you become the person that you are.
Radha: My mother is from Japan, my father is from India and they immigrated to Canada, where we were born and raised. Watching them be thousands of miles away from their families and courageously create community. Courage is the word that I’ll often use as it relates to belonging and community building because there’s so much shame around, “I don’t belong,” that we need to de-stigmatize that. Having the courage to say, “Where my friends at? Where my people at? Let’s hang out.” Having the courage to do that, but my parents were such a great example of two people that barely spoke English. My mom still has a thick Japanese accent and my dad has a thick Indian accent and they figured it out.
They created a community in their respective French Canada where they didn’t speak any French. They made all these Caucasian friends who came over for curry and sushi. They did it. I watched them do that. Getting into an American college, that whole experience then led me back to the sense of loneliness. I then went back to my roots and I was like, “Let me do what my parents did, do it for myself, and begin building community one-by-one. Let me start at a community event like Daybreaker and give people a place that they could feel deep inclusivity and practice celebration.”
I love the respect that you have for your parents. All too often, when you see successful second-generation individuals and they look at how their parents happen to have led their lives, they say, “I want to live my life differently.” What you’re saying is maybe you do want to live it differently, but you want to take the incredible lessons around the community that they taught you and the rich community that they were in. I have a community in religion, in my synagogue and in the neighborhood that I live in. I’m lucky to have had that and a lot of people don’t. We’re lucky to both have that and take that from our parents.
Radha: My husband is Jewish. My daughter is 1/4 Japanese, 1/4 Indian, 1/2 Jewish. We do all the things. I’m the biggest fan of Jewish rituals and all the ways in which you gather for Shabbat Fridays. I do Shabbat Friday more than most of my Jewish friends and that ritual is important to creating community as well. We can borrow some of these potent areas inside of religion, sports teams, colleges, some of the best organizations and political systems. Take some of those ingredients and apply that to our day-to-day communities, which most people don’t do. They hang out with people who happen to be sitting at the desk or their locker to their left or their right.
They stumble into these friendships and fall into these groups without asking themselves, “Do I feel good here? Do they align with my VIA, my Values, Interests, and Ability?” Be intentional about your friends, not just about your love, romance, and career. My friends are the ones who showed up for my first Daybreaker event, bought tickets, shared it with their friends. Every aspect of my success wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for nurturing and being intentional about finding committee members who were like, “Yes,” to my ideas, not like, “This is stupid,” or jealous or envious, or shit-talking to you, and eliminate that energy. Grandfathered-in friendships are just not good enough anymore. You get to up-level now.
One of the things you talked about that I read is some people have a strong internal locus of control. Some people have a strong external locus of control. Meaning, when things happen, they say it because of outside versus inside. A lot of studies have proven that the most successful people tend to have a strong internal locus of control. They look at how they can make changes in themselves, how they can have agency and how they can change things as opposed to letting things be changed by them.
Radha: It’s a mix of the two to add to that. The internal side was there, but then I wouldn’t be where I am without my external environment, community and friends. I feel like it can’t be me charging ahead, but without the friend, the second year that what did they say, “The first participant is the movement maker.” I love the idea of it being a little mix of the two.
I have to say that your child’s 23AndMe is going to be fascinating to see your kid’s genetic code at some point because it’s going to have 5% of everything. Isn’t that the best from a diversity standpoint? Speaking of science a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about D.O.S.E. Define D.O.S.E. for our readers around the Chemistry in the body that comes from an activity, belonging, and the community on a personal level. I go running 4 or 5 times a week. When I don’t, I don’t feel the same. When I’m around friends or my wife and think how we have many years of marriage with tremendous love, when we don’t see each other, also we miss that oxytocin. Talk to us about the four components of D.O.S.E. and how people can use that to help themselves.
Radha: D.O.S.E. is a project that we started inside of Daybreaker during COVID. The idea for it was to help people harness and practice accessing their quartet. Their happy neurochemicals are for happy neurochemicals. D.O.S.E. stands for Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins. When I was writing my book a few years ago, I discovered that our four happy neurochemicals spelled out the word DOSE. I was like, “This is a huge discovery again. We don’t need to D.O.S.E. ourselves on all the other things.” Nature is showing us that we can practice how to D.O.S.E. ourselves on our natural supply. During COVID, with all depression and isolation and I’ve had three friends whose siblings commit suicide at that time. These are kids who were in their early and mid-twenties. I knew that we couldn’t be like, “We’re not going to events for a year until we come back offline. We have to continue serving our community.”
It’s the first-ever joy practice where we could help people. Someone like you who’s used to running, that spike in your endorphins, adrenaline, and all of that are things that your body is used to, but for most people who are older, younger, or who aren’t necessarily used to it, that can keep the cortisol levels spiking. Much of the high-intensity hit training workers that we see nowadays and many of the workouts that we see in general are continuing to entrain your brain to be more stressed and to continue releasing and spiking cortisol levels. We partner with the Greater Good Science Center out of UC Berkeley in California. We began looking at awe, joy, and how to unpack and create movement practices where you can unlock your D.O.S.E., your happy neurochemicals by practicing and joy is a practice.
We can bio-hack our happiness by doing these types of movement modalities and practices. We began surveying the landscape of all types of movement modalities that exist from Japanese forest bathing, nature walks, calisthenics, yoga meditation, tapping practices, ritual practices, all different things inside of this new world of joy practices that we want to make mainstream in the world. We want practicing joy to be as ubiquitous as going to the gym or practicing yoga. With what’s happening with COVID, we feel that gentle enrollment is what the world needs.
I am convinced it’s going to happen. You are going to be making it happen. The 500,000 people part of Daybreak is going to be 500 million people and it’s going to affect all those people in positive ways. One of those powerful experiences for me was I met with a therapist and talking about the meeting for Meetup. What she told me is she tells each of her people who are suffering anxiety, depression and loneliness, “Go to a Meetup event as your first act and then let’s talk about potential medication.” Joy can be that as well.
Radha: Community and belonging inspire joy. It’s the root of joy and it is our root chakra. It is where we come from. We were born in a community. We feel anxious when we feel separated. Even if you call yourself an introvert or extrovert, connection is still paramount. We are spectacularly social creatures. We need to be in community, whether it’s a small group or a big group, to thrive and survive.
It’s out of our natural state like you were saying. It’s almost evolutionary out of our natural state. As gatherers, we had to be part of that in order to survive.
Radha: The reason we’re at the top of the food chain as human beings are because we were able to collaborate to build the pyramids and bigger structures. Engineers built one part of this thing while the designers built this one. We wouldn’t be top of the food chain if we weren’t collaborators. That’s what most animals are. They’re lone wolves. That’s what makes us a superior species. I say that with a grain of salt because we are also screwing up the planet quite a bit. To add to what you’re saying about doctors. We are working on that with the Greater Good Science Center. We’re working on the first-ever study where we’re building a comprehensive program and our D.O.S.E. practices at the end of every one. You can take a survey response where the Greater Good Science Center can then analyze it. Ultimately, my dream would be for doctors to prescribed joy practices.
One more thing to add to that, which you’re going to geek out on is, we spent four months developing a Happiness Quiz with the Greater Good Science Center and their lab. In the same way that you can map your Myers-Briggs personality, we can map your D.O.S.E. What exactly is your D.O.S.E. makeup? You have 3 parts dopamine, 2 parts oxytocin, 3 parts serotonin and 2 parts endorphins based on this series of questions and based on your life. We then would prescribe you a series of joy practices specific to your needs. To me, that’s fun and exciting.
It’s great because it’s all about understanding what a person’s needs are and then taking action. You talked about pyramids and food chains. We’ve got to hit a little bit on Maslow’s hierarchy. I’ve always been a deep believer in how do you get towards self-actualization, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I was enthralled by it when I was eighteen, taking Psych 101. One of the things that you said in your book and other places is belonging is the bottom of the pyramid, which I do believe in. Share a little more about that.
Radha: Maslow wrote the greatest pyramid in 1943. A lot has been discovered and studied since around community, belonging, social connectedness and relatedness. When he created it in 1943, there wasn’t the data to show how critical belonging is for us to even rise up the pyramid. Belonging has to live at the base of the pyramid. Without it, we can’t move into purpose, joy, the best jobs, the best feelings of safety and all of that. To ascend each level of the pyramid, the community is an important part of that ascending as well. You can’t find self-actualization without being in the community. I modified it based on new research.
It struck a chord. Let’s get back to the geeking out part because one of the things you talked about was the need for individualized or personalized, almost prescriptions of joy that people need. One of the things I love about the book is it talks well-around the path of self-discovering people, self-discovering things about what makes you tick and what your needs are and I think that’s an important first stage. Everyone needs different things. That assessment that you talked about around D.O.S.E. and what one needs is going to be different for different people. I’d love for you to share a little more about the path of self-discovery in that first step.
Radha: When you take the quiz and you’re invited into this 45 question journey, you’re brought through multiple areas of your life. How do you like to connect? If you walk into a party, are you going to the refreshment bar and sipping your drink or are you jumping in the middle of the dance circle? Where are you in that social field? What are your movement patterns? How are you moving week after week? We can begin to understand where you are on your movement journey because movement and joy are deeply correlated. There are multiple areas of the quiz that we are unpacking so that by the time we give you your prescription, and we understand that, “This is someone who is more introverted or a bit more whatever.”
We will prescribe more oxytocin classes because oxytocin is about trust and connection. It’s about practicing courageous connection. If someone is feeling unmotivated, they can’t get out of bed, or they feel like, “I want to go to my dreams and my goals, but I don’t know how to get there,” We might prescribe more dopamine and endorphins classes. For someone who might be less set in a more sedentary, less movement driven, we might prescribe more endorphins classes. It depends on where you are in your life. Based on that, we’ll prescribe you a series of classes that will boost those neurochemicals, which will then enhance every aspect of health. The other side of it also is it’s not just about doing our 33-minute heroic doses or 11-minute micro-doses, that whole idea. If you rebrand and reframe what microdosing is and you can microdose in your supply.
The world is heading in this way. Think about the growth of functional and integrated medicine. If you mentioned functional integrative medicine many years ago, people are like, “What?” Now, a number of people are going to functional doctors and integrative medicine doctors. My wife and me are big believers, and how they incorporate healing from many different cultures. That’s where the world is going.
Radha: You’re going to love this then because we’re launching Functional Happiness. We’re building an entire universe called Functional Happiness.
I’ve been in a big study of happiness for a while. I’m intrigued.
Radha: The Functional Happiness model is a personalized science-based approach that translates the happy neurochemical needs of individuals into movement practices and exercises to promote optimal happiness. It’s what we talked about, but it’s like, “How can we create a literal coaching program around functional happiness?” The same way that you have functional medicine, integrative nutrition, or different areas of life. How can we create an ultimate coaching program to help people be functionally happy? What does that mean? It’s like, “How is your space? What is the light in your space?” down in those details. What are you listening to? Every aspect of your life would be good to analyze. We’re launching that under The Joy Institute.
Radha: Our founding advisors are Dr. Dacher Keltner, the Founder of Good Science Center, Mark Hyman, the Founder of Functional Medicine. Dr. Joe Dispenza is my favorite hero in the world of quantum and understanding the brain-body in the quantum field. We have Lavinia Errico, who is the Founder of Equinox. We’re inviting the holistic wellness bad-ass community to come together and build a community of joy that we’re all here in support of creating a center where people can come to us as a resource to find their most potent joy practice specific to their needs.
One place that might be worthwhile to explore and you may have already explored is Bhutan. It’s a small country and it has a king. The king of Bhutan said many years ago, “The most important thing for my citizens is happiness. Rather than us measuring the value of our country by GDP, Gross Domestic Product, instead, we’re going to measure it by Gross Domestic Happiness. We’re going to create a happiness index for our country and that’s going to be the goal of me and our citizens.” It’s a powerful thing to think about a country, people, or community who are measuring their success based on utility happiness. Think about what joy could provide for that.
Radha: It also connects to the longevity of how long our citizens live. The longest living countries if you look at The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner’s book. It’s like the Okinawans in Japan, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Sardinians, and the Costa Ricans. There’s a connection between longevity and happiness as well. America is number 55 in our longevity index in terms of all the country. That was the worst smack-dab in the middle of where we should be at the very top, given our resources and where we are. It remembers where to focus your attention and where to practice day-to-day.
That’s longevity but also meaning and health during that time. You mentioned Meetup, which I’m appreciative of. Thank you for doing it. You’ve been to some Meetup events when you maybe were new to cities or when visiting cities. Any experiences you want to share around that?
Radha: There’s a Crypto community that was on Meetup that I found. It was a wonderful group to learn. What is Crypto, how does it exist, and why does it exist? It’s a whole community-based approach to decentralizing our banking system. I thought that was a beautiful meta aspect of Meetup of like, “Here’s Meetup gathering a community of humans talking about bringing a more shared economy and more democratic way of sharing the wealth.”
I thought that was cool. I know many of my friends who’ve gotten so much out of their Meetup communities across the world. They’ve raved about how it’s supported them in finding their tribe, finding new business partners, finding love and finding all the things. At Daybreaker, we’ve had all of those successes at our events too. When I hear that, I’m like, “What else is there?” To me, what is more, important than helping people connect and helping people find friendships in the sense of, “I’m home.” That belonging feeling. There’s nothing more important than that. I’ve been a fan from afar and as a member for many years. I’m always inspired by the work that you do.
We’re equally inspired by the work you do. I’m even more inspired. I can’t wait to find ways of collaborating together. There are going to be many ways. You had an opportunity to get to know Oprah Winfrey. You also got to know Michelle Obama. Talk about the pyramid of self-actualization. The very top of that pyramid is Oprah and Michelle Obama in my mind. You were on the Vision Tour with Oprah. I want to believe that Oprah is because she’s inspirational to me. Tell us about getting to know Oprah a little bit and spending time with her. What was that experience like?
Radha: To backtrack for one second, we never would have got to know Oprah or be invited to the tour had one of our Daybreakers Chicago former producers left us to go and work for her. It goes to show that community is such an important aspect of how life continues to manifest. If you have strong bonds and ties, your community will continue showing up for you. This friend and colleague, Mel, championed us on the inside from the moment she went in there and they were like, “Where is the dancer? Let me play. What is this.” She got to know us and that was how he got to know Oprah and her team. It all comes down to nurturing relationships and creating that environment of joy for others to champion you.
Oprah is someone who floats. She floated over to me the first time to pick up Soleï. I was like, “Please don’t cry.” Soleï was ten months when we went on tour. She was the tour baby. If you look at the tour photo, Oprah is holding Soleï in the center and there are 300 people around her. Soleï had that photo forever. There’s a reason why Oprah’s team has been with her for many years. The reason why she is Oprah is because of her team, her magnanimous energy, and who she is but also her ability to lead and how she’s kept this organization of women who have been her soldiers for many years.
They took care of all of us, the way they take care of each other, the way the tour was opening every stop of the tour and then high-fiving Oprah on the way off the stage as well. We did the after-parties where people could high five. It was unbelievable that happened. She was on a mission to help both black women be more healthy and well. She’s like, “I don’t want to leave this planet as the talk show host. I want to leave this planet having made a difference in the world of wellness.” I watched her lead and her hold an audience for five hours for nine stadiums. We were on stage for twenty before she came on. She was out there supporting, healing and serving. It was a deep inspiration. If she can penetrate the masses and tell the story of the importance of joy, dance, meditation, and health, then who better than her? It was magic.
Mentoring is powerful and to have people like Oprah or Michelle Obama as a mentor and to see them firsthand, that’s something you’re going to take with you for the next 50 or 60 plus years in terms of how you’re interacting with your communities. It’s a wonderful thing. I’m glad that you’re able to have that experience, and you’ll be able to pay it forward for many people because of it.
Radha: This is just the beginning. I feel so inspired by her mission and what she’s doing with WW as well and redefining what wellness for African-American women, for women who are struggling with their weight and health. All of that is inspiring. It gives us wings to be able to do the same.
You shared so much. I’m happy for our readers and they could get so much. There’s this one last part of the show around the rapid-fire questions. I’m going to ask you a few. First, do you have a favorite quote?
Radha: Yes. “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan my day.” It’s perfect. It’s like we want to improve and enjoy and how do we do both.
What’s your first job?
Radha: My first job was as an investment banker out of college. It was proof to my Indian father that a Communications Major with a minor in Film could get a job on Wall Street. Then 9/11 happened two months after I started. I started in July of 2001. In September of 2001, 9/11 happened. That was the beginning of this whole journey of like, “The mystery of life is you never know when it’s going to end. It’s time to pursue our passions now.” That was the beginning of that at 22. It was a life-defining moment for me.
Some people know this but Meetup was actually founded because of 9/11. When 9/11 happened, our Founder, Scott Heiferman, looked around and saw many people in trauma, stress, and in need of community, of connections, and hanging around the lobby of his apartment. I took over for Scott many ago. He met all these people he never saw before that were on his block, and he said, “It shouldn’t take a tragedy to get people to realize the importance of community and connecting. How could we create an organization that builds community?” Thank God we have over 300,000 communities on Meetup in 193 different countries. How can we do that? It was all because of what happened on 9/11. It affected many different people in profound ways. You’re an example of that. If you’ve got a time machine to go anywhere, anytime, where are you going to?
Radha: I am going to hang out with DaVinci. He’s like the ultimate mischief-maker, artist, creator, brilliant physicist scientist. I want to go and be his BFF. I would go right to him and hang out.
What is something on your bucket list?
Radha: This is my year of joyful. I’m doing all my things. I want to do a dance Vipassana. I just want to dance in silence for ten days. I have a farm upstate that I bought during COVID. I want to do a gathering with friends where I’ll DJ or we’ll have guest DJs, but for ten days, we’re dancing and purging. The same that you do with the Vipassana and seated silence meditation, I’m going to do that in motion and movement. That is something that I’ve been wanting to do personally forever. That’s one that I can share.
It’s going to be powerful to do it with other people. It’s going to be so great. The last question is, what do you want to be most remembered by?
Radha: I want to be remembered as an instigator of joy. Help people return to their essence. In doing so, it could support others in doing it for themselves. That’s for my daughter, too, to be the instigator joy of her life. She remembers me as someone who always inspired her to be more joyful.
You’re going to achieve it.
Radha: Thank you.
Thank you so much. This is wonderful. I love getting to know you. I’m looking forward to staying in touch.
Radha: I love the spirit of this. I love you, your energy and the brightness. It brings me joy. Thank you for having me.
I enjoyed having Radha on the show. Her energy was contagious, without a doubt. The thing that stuck out for me is the pivot from investment banker to community and joy activist. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s amazing to learn from. The second thing for me is bringing science to an understanding of joy and happiness, and specifically the D.O.S.E. concept. There’s so much to unpack around it. Thank you for reading. If you like this episode, subscribe and leave a review. I love to know it and don’t forget, keep connected because life is better together.
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About Radha Agrawal
Radha Agrawal is a community force. She is the co-Founder, CEO and Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness movement in 28 cities and five continents with a community of almost half a million people around the globe. She and her team recently launched a science-backed platform DOSE by Daybreaker, a first-of-its-kind membership and community to practice JOY with the goal of making “practicing joy” as ubiquitous as practicing yoga and meditation.
She is a successful entrepreneur (Co-Founder THINX), author, speaker, DJ, inventor, and investor in mostly female-owned businesses. Her best-selling book BELONG answers the questions, “how the heck do I find my people?” and “How do I create large and meaningful communities in the real world?”. She was named by MTV as “one of 8 women who will change the world.” Radha lives between Brooklyn New York and her farm in Rhinebeck along with her love Eli, her daughter Soleï and their dog Nanü. She is currently teaching joy practices on DOSE every week, developing a Functional Happiness Teacher training program and writing her next book, The Joy Ride.