E103 - How to Build Purpose, Freedom & Wealth (Founder's Advice) | Devon Levesque

0:00I'm coming down and there's a ledge. and the ledge is maybe five inches. Below the ledge is like a 5 ,000 foot drop. There ain't no way I'm getting there. It's impossible. And guess what? My oxygen is running out. So I'm probably going to suffocate and die. But I say... Back flipping off of Everest. Doing the most insane workouts ever. Multiple businesses like Running Man and All Day Running. D-Von Levesque. Everyone asked, why are you bear calling the marathon in that 12 months? Well, to raise awareness for suicide prevention because my dad took his life when I was 16. when I would talk about that, it would actually be like therapy to me.

0:34I lost my mom to cancer when I was 11. It's all going to come out at one point. It was only until early 20s where I was actually comfortable talking about it. I developed a new method from my therapist a couple of weeks ago. It's called the 5-4-3-2-1 method to where you essentially... What was the worst point for you where you're like, no, no, no, this is actually terrifying? I've never actually said this. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I just want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by me and everything that I have built to help you guys level up. If you want to transform your physique, build muscle, lose body fat, build strength, then you have the thirst app.

1:09This has everything inside that you could possibly need to get yourself in shape to hold yourself accountable as well. I also have the digital playbook, which is a step-by-step guide to help you guys build a following, monetize the following, and also build a strong personal brand. This is everything which I have done over the past nearly 10 years to allow myself to live a life of financial freedom and also geographical freedom. I can basically do whatever I want. Life is good. And I also have my newsletter, which has been revamped, where I'll share exclusive podcast insights, my raw thoughts on business, fitness, and much, much more.

1:44So if you're interested about any of those, check out the description. You'll find the links to all of them. Let's get cracking with the episode. What's up, guys, and welcome back to First Things First. We are We are somewhere different today. We are on location at Sweet Honey Farm in New Jersey with my boy. Yeah. Devil's the best. What up, baby? How you doing? I'm just living, man. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling happy. I'm feeling present. I'm not surprised. I've just had a tour of this place, and it's making me want to farm. You want to farm? I never thought I would want to farm before, but I feel like this is how we are supposed to live, humans.

2:18Oh, man, 100%. I grew up on a farm in Idaho until I was eight. And then my whole family moved the farm cross country. So Idaho is on one side of the US, New Hampshire is on the other side. We moved cows, horses, everything across country. And I grew up from eight to 16 on a farm. My mom was a horse trainer. And it's funny because I tried getting out of the farm life. And I was like, I got to go to the big city to make something of myself. and like you know you know you know have success whatever that meant at the time and i find myself right back here and i'm happier full circle you know full circle so when did you move to new york oh when i was probably 18 right out of military academy because i went to college in long island yeah and so i was kind of just long island for three years dropped out of college and then started running nightclubs and restaurants in new york and i didn't know that yeah i see it's quite a lot because the first time we met was in 2019 at the it was a promix facility wasn't it uh yes yes yes yes yeah in new york city so at that point you were you would i was a trainer i was i was training people um i just sold my first business um and i was the first one training business personal training and um i just a really good clientele list and um by the I have smoke just coming into my eyes.

3:41So if I'm talking, closing my eyes, there's not something wrong with me. Just fucking crying. It's going to be emotional podcast. Very emotional. Yeah, that was 2019. So I was in New York for maybe five years at that point, running nightclubs and restaurants for three years. When I say running, I was managing. I was managing bartenders and bottle girls and barbacks and P &L sheets and making sure we filled the room. And I did that for about four years. And then I went back to my roots. My dad was a special weightlifter. So I went back to my roots of training people. And all those clientele that used to come in and buy tables from me kind of transitioned and started personal training with me.

4:25Yeah. So what were your specialization when it came to the training? Just a body recomposition. Making people throw up. I was like, I want to give you the absolute hardest workout in New York City. Hands down. I told myself like it's got to be hard and I know for a fact if it's hard they're going to come back without getting injured I had one injury a girl rolled her ankle on some jumping thing but no one really got injured it was more just trying to not motivate them almost a little reverse psychology like you can't do this you know and it would almost push these high achievers to do it so you were making me do some stuff which I'd never done before doing those push ups on the Olympic rings oh yeah the back flips off the walls yeah everything it was that was a that was a fun workout that was a humbling workout yeah that was good it was good man um so how did you how did you first of all start the the promix brand um i met albert who's my partner uh through a mutual friend chris howell and um you know albert's amazing he's a food dietician he's a you know food scientist you know all all the accolades in the world of creating products in the health and uh like supplement space vitamins and he was doing all farm to table so he would go to farms he would source the raw ingredients bring them back to a warehouse package them up himself he didn't use manufacturers he wasn't using anyone um except for him and one other person and uh they would send it out and And it was kind of that brand that people would know about and they would use, but they wouldn't really post about.

6:01And I think I saw an opportunity to blast this out because it was such quality product. It was the highest grade protein in the world. We had protein at the time and bars. And it was just really high grade. And so him and I partnered up. We redid the back end of the business. and you know that whole equity splits and all that fun stuff and we kind of i took control of the front end he took control of the back end you know it was a match made in heaven and we just kept hiring people better than us you know to scale this thing and um it's interesting because it did get to the point where all of a sudden people were interested in the quality of supplements because to begin with it was just like your protein powders protein bars pre-workouts and stuff and it was just most of the stuff on the market was garbage yeah even the stuff i was consuming even some companies i'd worked with like it would not sit well now my stomach right i would consume it and i was like why am i even promoting them yeah i think i think the reason is because when an industry gets so saturated and there's a lot of the same players people start to look under the hood of those players and what's under the hood of supplement companies where the products are coming from what type of you know ingredients do you have in your products who is making those ingredients what who what is that farmer joe's name that is actually making that whatever you know whatever product whatever ingredient you can't even pronounce the name of like who the fuck is making that yeah and i think that's where the supplement industry and vitamins and protein bars and industry is going and has gone people just want to know transparency they want to know where it's coming from and what that farmer's name is that actually made the product and is the soil good like how are they watering it are they spraying stuff on the crops you know because everything that we're drinking eating around like it's made from somewhere you know and so what is this by the way this this is uh this is this is deep bloat deep bloat is derived from a seed i found in africa the seed is called the baobab seed now i didn't find it i was approached with it by a couple kids um after i climbed kilimanjaro and what they presented you with the seat yeah he literally these three kids presented me with this big seed it has a ton of potassium in the seed a ton of vitamin c and natural prebiotics and so then we add probiotics uh three strains we add turmeric and uh this will help your gut your gut has two uh uh bacterias in prebiotics and probiotics you need both for your gut to really break down the food and then send that food and nutrients into your bloodstream um and not enough of us are getting enough pre and probiotics so that's why your skin might break out that's why you might be going to the bathroom irregularly it might be why you have mood swings it's all this is a second brain right they're directly connected and so this is full gut health uh product called deep load and it um were you experiencing issues before you put this together i didn't know i had issues before but um i know when i first started taking the baobab and albert and i started making this mixture things started to uh make more sense like my mood started to change i started to feel lighter i started to feel a little bit happier i started to feel like wow down here going to the bathroom you know not not too much information but like easier you know what i mean and in the morning when i take it i take it at 8 a.m.

9:43before my coffee, it flushes you out. So you go into the day light, not bloated from the night before and your body's working to digest all the food. This flushes you out. It's a deep bloat effect. So how do you go about looking to scale the company? Hiring people better. I look at businesses, especially online, it's going to take a consumer seven times on average to see a logo or a product in order for them to then convert into a customer and then how do you keep them to continuous you know what's your retention strategy so what are the seven points is it guerrilla marketing are you wearing it are you throwing an ad do you have a good email strategy do you have good sms like text or do you have influencers posting about it are you doing events And so I try to use all of those as levers as we scale because right now it's 2025.

10:41Marketing is changing. AI is changing. Events. Is COVID happening? What's going on? And you can pull any of those levers depending on what society is doing and just being aware of it. So having a high IQ and understanding, okay, what's happening in the world? How are you looking at this product? How are you showing up? Are you traveling more or less? And just understanding the world. And so once you understand the levers, understand the world, then you have a good product, you can kind of adjust the levers. But then the good product is the key, you know, a good high quality. Because if you don't have a good one, then no one's going to stay.

11:21You know, and that's where Albert comes in. And I don't know. Was there one in particular that worked best for you guys or you tried them all and it just... From a marketing standpoint? Yeah, yeah. I think it was community building. It was like, you know, doing in-person events. It was bringing people together, real people, real stories, real change, or how they actually implement this into their life. Going after our current consumers, right? So if you have your first hundred customers, what are those hundred people doing? What do they need? How is it helping them? And then retargeting and...

11:56There's a lot of word of mouth. Yeah, word of mouth. There's two metrics I always talk about that businesses are, they're never on the P &L sheet. It's word of mouth. Um, and, and that's just like talking. That's, uh, that's, you know, seeing it somewhere that's, you know, in a small conversation with your, you know, friends, family, whatever. And then FOMO, fear of missing out. Yeah. I want that. I'm like, I, I can't go on the other side of the fence. I want to go there. You know what I mean? You're quite good at building up that hype. Every time I see you post an event that you've organized or you and Jesse have put together, I'm like, man, I look so fun.

12:32There is a lack of that, I feel. Lack of fun. Yeah. Fun, community. Everything's just very serious and boring these days. Yeah. It's too competitive. People's egos and the competition world, it's too much sometimes. We only have one life, and I'm just trying to have fun. You know what I mean? And if I can leave this earth and just know I laughed a lot and I was around good people. And if you're on my team and we're friends, I want you to win no matter fucking what. Like I look at you and I watch your stuff. I'm like, fuck yeah, Mike, let's go. You're traveling. You're doing this. You're launching this.

13:10You're investing in that. I'm like, hell yeah. Like I want you to win. And if you have people around you that are like, fuck man, I hope he trips and falls. That's not cool. You know what I mean? And so I try to surround myself with people that support and I support them. and I just try to go about life that way whatever I'm putting out in the world is what I'm gonna attract back a lot of attraction so um how have you how have you been able to get yourself in the right position to network with a lot of other entrepreneurs and go-getters because that's one thing I noticed with you you always seem to be around like people who are doing they're making moves.

13:48Yeah. Like how have you been able to do that? Showing up, man. I think putting your, putting myself in a position where it's not that normal happy hour or that normal expo or that normal masterclass that everyone's going to, it's going to the middle of Antarctica and going to a camp where there's only a hundred people. How hard it is to get to Antarctica and get to that camp. You know, what type of people are at that camp? It's people that aren't going to the expos. It's people that are that go that extra 10 steps not that extra step that extra 10 steps and then you start meeting people like that and then that starts expanding it's the same thing with being on mount everest it's like those people aren't just like they're not just regular joes you know what i mean they're they're real people that are just extraordinary they're just thinking so far outside the box they're they've been there done that like they're not going to workout class they're going to fucking climb a mountain for 30 days you know what i mean and so it's like what level are you at from a from a grit from a curiosity standpoint and how can you just keep leveling that up you know what i mean and i think that's where i meet the most people on the mountains and doing hard shit um go-getters high performers there's something in their brain where they want and just keep going, going, going.

15:13And eventually the workout in the gym or that workout class or doing that marathon isn't enough. It's too easy. It's too easy, you know? And so you start to meet really interesting people that have kind of, and I'm not saying it's good or bad. Everyone, you know, I grew up my whole life working out in a gym. It's not bad. And I'm not past that. I worked out today, but it's going that extra step and being extra, extra, extra curious. But you got to show up. 30 % of it's showing up. When I'm at the bottom of all these mountains, I'm still there. I still have to do the steps. I still have to walk up, but at least I'm there.

15:50I'm standing there and I'm like, all right, motherfucker, let's do this. What was the first really challenging thing you did? I mean, I would imagine it was the bear crawl. Bear crawl. Yeah, the bear crawl. First of all, why? Well, like why bear crawl? bear crawl i think is the hardest workout that you can do it's like a physically you don't need weights you don't need you know too much space you just have to crawl so we've been doing this since we were babies right um but somehow it we lost it as we started to learn to walk so anyways bear crawling is hard and i want to show people that you can overcome the impossible and really target people that are on the brink of maybe suicide or mental health issues or you know people that are just on the edge and be like fuck man i can't complete this and so uh ross edgely actually gave me the idea of course yeah ross he's been on the podcast yeah oh has he yeah yeah him and i have so many funny stories yeah he's nuts we're out we're in the lake district uh climbing climbing that highest point over there and he gave me the idea and uh i came back to america i told all my friends i must have told 20 30 people and then the next day i'm like all right i'm gonna start training and i told myself i'm like all right i'm gonna i'm gonna bear crawl a mile i'm gonna do 60 laps in that gym back and forth and uh it took me like two hours and i was like fuck why did i i told too many people and then uh i was like fuck it i i i gotta do this it's such an awkward position to get into so awkward damn i can't like i'm a man of my word i gotta i gotta do it now how long did you prep for to do that 12 months so 12 months of prep 12 months i would wake up at 2 3 a.m uh bear crawl for four or five hours as much as i wake up so early because i had calls at 9 a.m i had clients i still had to you know pay my bills i still had to you know get shit done and so i'd wake up early get it done and then go into my normal day but you'd start your morning doing four or five six miles bear crawling just crawling just crawling like legit just crawling on your hands and knees listening to a podcast you know talking to my assistant trying to figure out what calls i have that day you know i would occupy my brain but i would just crawl and then when it came the day of i started in brooklyn did pretty much the same exact crowd of the New York marathon.

18:21Um, cause the marathon was canceled that year, uh, cause of COVID and, uh, yeah, I completed it in 20 hours and 48 minutes and we ended up raising around 2 million bucks for suicide prevention. That was crazy. Yeah. That was really cool. And I had some great, great sponsors and it was fulfilling for me. And I, you know, I've never actually said this is probably the first time I'm saying that it's the first time I'm saying this on a podcast. the two million dollars was amazing and i know i'm helping people and and veterans specifically but what helped me the most was everyone asked why are you there calling the marathon in that 12 months news reporters um podcasts whatever and i always said well to raise awareness for suicide prevention because my dad took his life when i was 16 and when I would talk about that it would actually be like therapy to me because I never talked about my dad's suicide for 10 years and so all that shit was building up when you don't talk about stuff it just builds up in your backpack and so in that year not only was I bear calling and you know I was getting super strong and whatnot but it was actually I was getting strong up here because I was able to talk about shit that I went through a traumatic incident when I was 16 that I held on to and I lost my best friend, my dad, my coach, my, my mentor, et cetera, like that.

19:44And, uh, more than anything, it was, it, it helped my brain calm down and it was, it was 12 months of therapy. You know what I mean? So you didn't speak to anybody about that? For 10 years. After he passed, I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't, I didn't even really tell people. Yeah. And people would ask, where are your parents? Oh, they're not in town or, oh, have you talked to your daddy? Oh no, not really. I wouldn't even bring it up. Yeah. And I think it started to weigh on me. And yeah, it was a good 12 months, but I'm happy I did. And that was the hardest thing I did. And then every year after that, I committed to doing something hard every year.

20:22And so the following year, or it was a year after, I rode my bike across America, San Diego to Florida. And then I started getting into climbing. So I would do Aconcagua, highest point in South America, did Antarctica, highest, you know, Vinson, which is highest point in Antarctica, Kilimanjaro, but Kili's not hard. And then rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, 46 miles. And then recently Mount Everest, summiting Mount Everest. It's a tricky one when you lose someone at a young age. I mean, I lost my mom to cancer when I was 11. And I dealt with it the same way you did. Didn't talk to anyone, didn't want to talk to anyone.

21:06just kept it all up here and just tried to suppress it but obviously suppressing it is, it's all going to come out at one point, which it did a couple of times, but I think it was only until early 20s where I was actually comfortable talking about it and actually understanding how to deal with it. Probably therapy would have been beneficial when I was younger but it was kind of less of a thing back then. One, I'm sorry I didn't know you lost your mom. It, uh We also, like, when you were 11, I was 16. How the fuck are we supposed to know how to deal with it? Yeah, yeah. You know, or deal with it?

21:42Like, we don't know. And then you look at the therapist, and you're like, I'm going to talk to this random stranger about this. And you don't want to talk to your family members because they're also grieving as well. And so you start, it's just crazy. It's like the kid doesn't know, and you're in this really awkward position, and you're like, fuck it. I don't want to feel like this, so I'm just going to not talk about it. It's much easier that way. but it fucks you up if you don't and so i actually last year i went to this uh institute called the hoffman institute and it's seven days of intense work on traumatic incidents that that you've gone through and it helps unpack your brain like it was the best best most transformational week of my life i've ever had it was like and that's all like drug free drug free yeah you're not doing naked you're not doing weird shit you're not like you're just you're real it's it's work if it doesn't feel like work because it's you're doing you know you're helping yourself as you're doing this and it's just you know a lot of writing a lot of thinking a lot of your no phone no one knows your name and it uh it changed my life but i don't know i think you know i'm gonna go to like two or three of them this year as well and i think not the hoffman but you know there's a couple other courses and it's like working out you're not going to work out for a week and be in shape for the rest of your life yeah you have to continue the mental work and sharp not just i don't want to say sharpening the iron but like for real like you have to continue uh activating your brain and opening it up and the frontal lobe and calming it down and like you have this thing is controlling it and if you're not constantly making this better and that goes with Being on a mountain by yourself or being on a mountain and there's no music, there's no cell phone service, there's nothing except a fucking bowl of soup.

23:35That opens up a different part of the brain than when you're painting, than when you're working out, than when you're building a fire, than when you're raising a horse or a cow or you see when you have a baby with another woman, right? All of those are activating the brain. And I think the more that we can activate this, um, and it's not just in the city and, you know, London or New York city, just like go, go, go expand your brain, take a different path home. You know, you guys came in this way, go out that way. And then tomorrow, if you come, come in that way, like you see different things, talk to new people.

24:10And I think what you said at the beginning of this with the podcast, whatever episode this is, 90 or 91, whatever, um, that's 90 new conversations. your brain is probably like yeah it is huge and the thing with the brain bigger is better yeah you know like you want a big brain and uh i don't know that's what excites me about this podcast for you specifically because it's it's in the last couple years this has probably massively helped you as a human understand people see the world in a different way understand industries understand your eq has probably skyrocketed look along with your iq when it's changed me as well just being around these very successful people who have done some amazing things but they're i almost see them as mentors in a way even though it's a very sort of like i'm constantly talking to them but just the short interaction relatively short like an hour hour and a half yeah it's uh it's life changing sometimes yeah for sure my behavior's changed quite a lot for sure well you also see how they, I don't know about you, but I watch people very closely on how they talk to people, how they treat people, how they walk, how they kind of go about things.

25:22And it's not, I'm not being like weird or creepy. I'm just genuinely curious about human psychology and how people are thinking about stuff. And yes, does it directly impact ProMix and Olipop and how I'm building brands and whatnot? Yes. But more importantly, it helps with how I'm going to be a brother a son a father one day a husband a friend and i think when you understand people man life's a lot easier yeah you know you can walk into any room and be okay you told me you're coming i mean i knew you were coming but today it was like kind of last minute like all right we're gonna and like we're good yeah i mean not only because you're my friend but like it just it doesn't feel hard to sit down with you and chat and just like we did we we didn't really know this was happening today right and it was you know it's it's great and i and i i started trying to message you yeah i know i'm talking about and i'm like oh that was probably not like in work mode at the moment i know good we're here we're doing it we need to get some more wood on this yeah guys it is not it's not i would it's cold i really wanted to come here in the middle of summer but yeah it's not it's march right now march we had a couple of nice days two days ago Maybe throw like five.

26:35But today is quite chilly. Yeah, it's cool. We're going to get this thing covered. But you've been on top of Mount Everest, so relatively speaking. I mean, you are probably wearing one hoodie in comparison to whatever it was you were wearing on Everest. First of all, I'm curious about Everest. So people who want to do it, they want to do it because they're looking for a challenge? Or is there some sort of obsession with climbing the biggest mountains? what I noticed is everyone has a different purpose. Um, a big reason I did it, or let me not go into me yet. What I saw people doing it for was totally for them.

27:18Like sometimes it was, they were trying to, you know, yes, do the highest peak in the world. That's the obvious one. Sometimes they were interested in the Nepalese culture. Sometimes they were doing it with a buddy and they haven't reunited with their friend in 10 years and they they're big climbers and they're like let's go do a challenge together um sometimes unfortunately sometimes it's suicidal sometimes people are like i don't want to live i want to go die up here and people literally just die up there um we see they get to the top and they're just like oxygen mask off yeah um yeah of course there's people where it's like ego driven and you know i want to be the man and and go up there um sometimes you know sometimes it's just locals that don't forget about the the local um sherpa community where that's their job to go up it's a quick guiding job you know what i mean so i think everyone has their different reason it's not all 400 people that were on the mountain this past year we're not all out there for the same reason yeah you know um i went out uh my dad always talked about it um i i i you know it kind of goes back to why bear crawled but i want to i want to calm this i want to be able to focus on one thing at a time and not have this crazy brain of like thinking about a million things at once and it's raced i want to be able to comment and i find calmness on a mountain i find calmness when i'm just just walking man just out there and or climbing you know focusing on you know how my carabiners are or um you know how my equipment's working or how i'm layering or what i'm eating i'm not thinking about this at all yeah this goes fully out the window when you're up there you're not thinking i don't fucking know how much battery i have or what you know who's texting me or how many lights you have like this goes out and this consumes our day yeah and so if i can take that out then i can focus on this and also you know kind of tribute to my father and just i don't know i was i mean i was standing at the top of the world i was the only human on earth i was the tallest person on earth i was just up there and i'm like man i feel like i could touch heaven right now you know you're just up there and you're surreal you're just there's one point that's the highest point it's probably the size of this this uh this tree right here and you're just standing around and you're like fuck i start crying i'm like this is wild and uh of course that was a cool feeling you had to do a backflip whilst you were there as well yeah that was uh that was wild did it go to plan the no i wasn't even i kind of just had a burst of energy and i was up there and i'm like i don't think i'm coming up here again yeah my life um just because it was terrifying it was people are dying around me i'm seeing dead bodies it's avalanches i mean it's it's just terrifying it's not fun and i told myself i just want to get back to memorial day weekend in america because it's uh i just want to be on a boat somewhere and it's messed up because you're up there and it's like no one's coming to save you no no helicopters can't come and just pick you up they can't it's too it's too high after camp two there's helicopters can't make it up there so i don't know i uh the backflip was just there's no way i'm ever coming up here again let me do a couple things that i'll remember for myself and yeah that you know i did the backflip and a lot of people saw it i was like oh shit that was cool but uh and it's funny man some people are like why did you do a backflip on top of everest like that's so selfish and i'm like well yeah i can't please everyone man yeah whenever a video starts to get traction you always can get some negativity people just out of context people don't understand what's going on that's wild but now it was fine i wouldn't recommend eberist i don't think it's for me huh i don't think it's for me no you know i'll go up there you you would look good you'd be the most stylish eberus guy but uh i'm not a fan of the cold yeah it's cold yeah i don't i mean i get i don't get cold that much i'm fucking cold right now yeah i'm cold this is nice though what was a like shivering was there a point where you were just like what was the worst point when you were climbing everest for you where you're like i don't know this is actually terrifying yeah uh i was at about 28 000 feet everest is 29 000 29 29 30 feet it's it got it got taller in the last 10 years actually um so think an hour and a half two hours after I've summited I'm coming down and there's a ledge and the ledge is maybe five inches and uh I'm trying to descend down from me to this barn is this ledge below the ledge is like a 5 ,000 foot drop from me to the barn there's 100 people cramped all trying to get to the summit because we only have a couple seven days per year and this was a really nice day and i'm looking at here and i'm like there ain't no way i'm getting there it's impossible there's no room and guess what my oxygen is running out so i'm probably going to suffocate and die but i say you know what i'm sitting there with jen jen uh my buddy who i i climbed with and and john john wasn't with us at the time but gen gen and sherpa i was like yo i don't know about this and he's like i don't either he's like i don't think we're gonna make it across and i'm like fuck and so i started thinking about my funeral and i start thinking about um what they're gonna say at my funeral and what my mom is gonna say and you know my friends and oh that idiot of course he's gonna die on everest you know like just start thinking about every funny joke every Every commitment I've made, you know, people in my life, my dog's arm.

33:30I just start thinking like what I'm going to miss out on, you know, as a 31-year-old. And I kind of, I came to the conclusion, I'm like, I'm going to die. And okay, well, fuck it. Let's at least try to get across. And we took it slow and we've managed to get around every single person without falling down. And, uh, I get over it. We walk another 30 minutes and that whole ledge collapsed. And I think there was about five people that fell dead right by me. Holy shit. Yeah. And so, uh, that was pretty sketchy. You hear about it. Everyone said the Hillary step just collapsed. and um could have so easily been you oh yeah oh yeah yeah and and it's not they're not it's not that they're not experienced you're not climbing everest if you're not experienced there's no you know what i mean like you you have to have like some experience on your belt you have to understand the mountain a lot of it's luck though like just getting good weather not getting sick Your equipment didn't break.

34:38You know, you have enough food. Did your oxygen run out? Did your oxygen break? You know, is there anything, you know, interfering? A lot of things have to go perfect for you to be able to sell it on Everest. Those, I believe, five people were just in the wrong spot at the wrong time. You know, it's not like they did anything wrong to my understanding. So. Quick interruption, guys. Guys, have you noticed how a lot of guests that I've been speaking to on this podcast have taken the leap and built something meaningful for themselves? They didn't just think about it or make excuses. They took a risk and they made it happen.

35:13I don't want to hear about why you can't do it and why your situation is different. It's exactly why I have created the digital playbook for you. This is a step-by-step guide to you building your online presence, your social media following, and ultimately monetizing that following so you can live a life of freedom, both financially and geographically. recently you've done a trip to finland finland of course yeah we that's that i don't think i've met someone who's like more obsessed with saunas than you and we're signing today after this um we're gonna make sure it's on um get that nice pipe and hot please uh we uh yeah so this year my challenge and i kind of chilled this year just because last year was crazy and i wanted to i want last year was everest last year was everest yeah uh may 21st it will be the anniversary so not even a year um this year i just wanted to do something chill so we did my buddy jesse it's learn i every year we do something fun chill hard masogi which is a japanese uh i guess phrase uh kind of doing something where there's a 50 50 completion rate for you maybe it's a marathon maybe you're like I don't know if I can do a marathon.

36:26It's a 50-50. Well, that's your Masogi. You wanted to do something chill, but still it was a 50-50 completion rate. Yeah. This one wasn't really a Masogi. This was just our trip. It looks like a... I didn't realize... I watched all your stories and your posts. I didn't know how big the sauna vibe is in Finland. There's more saunas than people there. Five and a half million people. Three and a half million saunas. Sauna. They call it a sauna. and uh it's just part of their culture they you know they sound up for christmas they sound up for you know family you know weekly get-togethers they sound uh hey let's you know let's go let's go grab a sauna and they have beer afterwards so that's kind of their thing but i love sauna i love the contrast therapy um there's obviously a ton of studies behind it but i just like how it makes me feel yeah you're sweating you're you're getting cold you're going to this fight or flight and you know your heart rate's getting up there's a few went in and i saw that you were struggling and i was like if you're if you're struggling you know some of them are hot and these fuckers just kept putting water on the rocks and it was just it was getting hot but yeah we hit 25 saunas in eight days and accumulate uh cumulative of i think 17 hours in the actual saunas throughout those days not just like sauna cold that's the 17 hours sitting in the freaking sauna was 17 hours and uh i think it was actually 19 but yeah it was cool man the culture the food is amazing the salmon ate reindeer a lot the reindeer is really good um but they're i mean there's some of the saunas they were three four hundred years old you know the wood had a history like what wood they were using.

38:12It's just so ingrained in their culture. I wouldn't recommend Everest. I would highly recommend Finland. Yeah, I would do that one. It would look fun. You would love it, yeah. You're dog sledding in between, you're cross-country skiing, you're just having a good time. It's cold. So you've got to get over that part, but you can go into summer. It's a vibe. You have this philosophy where you say every day you should do one thing that you used to do as a kid. Yeah. Where did that come from? I kind of just made it up. I think it kind of tied together at Hoffman. I didn't realize they go over like your inner child, basically who you are before you're 12.

38:51Because before you're 12, you're not really developing too much ego or anything. You're kind of just this kid that just has no worries in the world, right? And they're just doing things that make them laugh and happy and fun. And so I try to do one thing every day that I used to do before I was 12. So I'll go hug a cow. I'll go climb a tree. I'll go ride a skateboard. You know, I'll go do something that just switches work mode off and life off and just say, be a kid real quick. And I think it's what keeps you young. I think it's the fountain of youth, you know? Yeah, because we don't, adults don't really get to play.

39:32You don't get to play. Yeah. When do you play? hey, when are people talking about, let's go to the playground? If you and I went to the playground right now, we're like, yo, let's just go do the slide. You would be like, fuck, this is weird, but fuck, that was actually kind of fun. I love a good water slide. Or even just going like in the sea when the waves are massive. I used to just love playing about in the sea. Oh my God, fucking amazing. Because so many people are so obsessed with work and making money that they're not really allocating that time to enjoy themselves or have a bit of fun. And it usually tends to be something that's maybe counterproductive or involves drinking or partying.

40:09And it's like, that's not really feeding the soul. No, it's not. I agree, man. I think the world is starting to understand that health is wealth. And what comes with health is fun and happiness. And, you know, I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I think the Arnold days are out a little bit. And it's more about how happy you're waking up and how content. Everyone wants to wake up ecstatic. I want to just wake up so happy. It's not going to happen. But you can wake up content and you can wake up and say, all right, I'm all right. I'm good. I'm okay. I'm not ecstatic. I'm not depressed I'm okay and that's good and if you can just get to that point that's my goal you know is just to be able to wake up and smile I don't have to have a fucking party going on I don't need champagne in my face like I just need to be okay that's all right and that alone will fix a lot of your ego, your drive, your overcommitment, saying yes to people too much.

41:28It'll fix a lot of these things that weigh us down. If you can just be like, I'm all right. I'm content. I developed a new method from my therapist a couple weeks ago. It's called the 5-4-3-2-1 method, where you essentially, when you're feeling stressed, you're anxious, just you use your sight and so you look to the right and you focus on one little tiny thing and look to your left one tiny thing down up and in front of you and that'll help kind of calm the abygdala then you smell you get you get uh air in and then you open your mouth you get air to the back of your throat and then you sit there and just listen and you listen for a bird a car you breathing the fire and that just helps reset your brain and guess what me just explaining that took me 15 seconds if you can do that five six seven times a day you're gonna go throughout the day where your cortisol levels aren't going up and down where you can kind of stay content and okay yeah no um what does what does a typical day look like for you now um you moved on from promax yeah yeah we well i didn't move on i'm still very very involved but yeah we sold majority of the company to a private equity firm so hoorah this thing is hoorah um love my new partners they're freaking dogs um but yeah still still very involved we're growing this thing um you've got an investment company as well yes yeah what's your thought process when you are looking to invest one would i actually use the product automatic two is this scalable and how is the consumer currently looking at it from a like a retention standpoint like are they coming back um three the founders or is it three or four like who are the founders do they have good intentions um and like is this product is this just a um is it a bubble that's going to pop is it just a trend or is this something that's actually going to help people?

43:34If I was into unhealthy products, I would be really, really fucking rich because the majority of the world love unhealthy products. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I was selling something unhealthy and that I know is impacting someone in a negative way. And so I stay in my lane. I like the health and wellness industry. I like making people feel good and happy and healthy. So I kind of stay in that lane and I know that lane. And then if I deep dive in a little bit more, I like to be on the online business, the CPG, consumer packaged goods, online, connecting with Shopify. And so I look at those businesses.

44:10But overall, you know, that all kind of goes to my brain, you know, in no particular order. And then are they profitable? Does this company actually make money? Because if a company is not making money, there's probably not going to be a buyer because there's so many brands in the world. The world is saturated with brands. especially with AI, hey, build me a new protein company. Hey, build me a new boot company. Boom, it'll create it. It's not hard to make a company, but can you make it profitable? And can you do two things? And I look at this when I invest. Is the company running on itself and is it growing on its own?

44:49And if it's not doing those two, then I don't consider it a real business. If I can separate myself from it fully, then it's a real business. If I have to micromanage everything, You constantly have to, you know, be a part of it. If you constantly... So you stay away from startups? Yeah, right now. So they already have to... Unless I'm controlling the startup. Okay. Right? Like, unless I have full autonomy. But... I don't think you would want to get involved into that. It's just, I mean, it's tricky. But you got to start somewhere. You know what I mean? I think when I was... I'm 32. When I was, you know, four or five years ago, I was involved in startups.

45:29But now it's not, you know, it's not necessarily a startup anymore. It's like, okay, we've got funding. We're there. We're doing it. We're, you still got to, the big part is profitability. So I look at profitability. If you're not profitable, I probably won't. I wouldn't invest in it. It's just too risky. Now that's for my, that's the industries I like for, for tech, you know, for maybe healthcare, for real estate. I don't know. Those aren't my, I guess, my forte, but that's the other thing I look at when investing. Like, have companies tried to expand outside too much and not focus on their, you know, the current market.