#738 - Alex Hormozi - 21 Brutally Honest Lessons About Life

23:37And when something changes in the future, they won't be able to iterate from there because they don't know why it was there in the first place. Right. And so like, I mean, I obviously dealt this with in a business context where like real dollars are at stake. And so like in the gym world, you know, gym watch for those you don't know. I had a big licensing company. We had 5 ,000 locations. And anyways, so we had basically business processes that we would, you know, iterate and figure out why this worked. And so then I had, I used to keep a list of names and then I just, it got too long and tiresome to keep the names of all the people who tried to take the stuff and then saw it as their own.

24:07I say their names every night before I go to bed. You think I don't remember you, I remember all of you. And so none of them, 10 years later, are still around. And none of them even came to a tenth of the size of Jamal. And it was because it wasn't theirs. Like the person that I would be far more afraid of, somebody who comes out with a significantly better system than what we had to help Jim's make more money and help their clients more But to this day, there still isn't one, and that one's just still the category king in that industry. And so it's like, just, and that's because we put, and we were talking about this earlier, everything is an R &D for us.

24:45And so we actually, like, were the only licensed company that had an R &D department, and we would test, we call them plays, but we test plays every 14 days. And so we'd spend 50 or 100 grand on just a test. We'd be like, all right, let's test this new marking campaign, or we'd say, hey, let's test this new high ticket sales processor. Hey, what if we did, what if we try to sell members to via chat? Let's just give it a shot, see what happens. And honestly, 70 % of the time, it was worse than the control. Like it didn't work as well. And what we would do is we'd present it to the licensees and say, hey guys, guess what we just spent 50 grand on that you don't have to spend money on?

25:20Look at the results of this sell membership. Total dogs shit. Yeah, yeah. The thing is, is that most people are actually really happy to know that it didn't work. Because it felt like they were scratching an inch you're like, oh great, I don't have to do that one. Like someone did that test for me. So anyways, all that to say, unless you have that, that trail of bodies behind you that led you to figure out this one thing, when there is a kink in the system because some external condition changes which it always will, they then don't know which means you're always still gonna be ahead. Yeah, that's very interesting.

25:51Yeah, because if you understand the physics of the system, if you understand the dynamics of why you're doing the things that you're doing in something changes you can respond. But it goes back to people with high standards. You have to presume that you win in the weeds. You have to presume that you win in the weeds. And if you do, and if you're continuing to be this close to it, as soon as things change, you go, that's interesting. Why is that happened? And that then allows you to continue to iterate. And you see it, because you're in the weeds, right? Somebody who's all the way zoomed out, just like, yeah, copy paste that.

26:28They're like, one, they're late because they have to see that it's working. See that it's working consistently. So they're three, six months behind. Then they start trying to figure out how to implement it. And then they start implementing it. And then what they don't see is the things that made the conditions that made it work to begin with. And so like, if you just assume that you're always in the lead, then it means then sure, second through 10th place will always copy number one, but to the Victor go to the spoils and so you will, like, no one gives a shit who is forthplace at the Olympics.

26:58Reminder that if you want to be exceptional, you're going to be different from everyone else. That's what makes you exceptional. You can't fit in and also be exceptional. Both have discomfort. When you fit in, you have internal conflict because you're not being 100 % you. When you're exceptional, you have external conflict because everyone sees you as different. Pick one. When your friends start to say, you've changed. Remember, it's because they don't know how to say, you've grown.

27:40I define words a lot because it helps me kind of like make sense of the world. and like exceptional is like an obvious one. We use the word exceptional, like you are not like everyone else.

27:54But even saying it like that, like you are not like everyone else. And so if someone says you're not like everyone else, then you can just reframe that as like, I am exceptional. And that's not a bad thing. And I don't, and I actually think that most people have, like this might be counter to most people's beliefs, but I think most people have the potential to be exceptional. Because most people are peculiar in their own way. They just stifle that because they want to be accepted by most people, but in so doing never accomplish what they want to do because they can form. There's probably a lot of things about the world or even your world around you that you're like, this never made sense to me.

28:33But then you do it anyways. And I think that a lot of innovation and a lot of what makes people exceptional is feeling, thinking that thought or seeing that thing and then being like, huh, I don't think I'm going to follow that rule anymore. Like why do I need to shower twice a day? Huh. Like I don't know, like why do I need to wear different clothing? Huh. Like there's just a lot of these social norms that people usually pass down to us or they're bred into us in high school and college and things like that. But it's like you see a guy who, you know, wears a cowboy hat and dresses a certain way and he basically wants to say, I am this archetype of person.

29:13But if cowboy boots are not as comfortable for you as new balances are, and you know that and you still wear cowboy boots, I would call you a fraud. Because it's like a micro rebellion against yourself. It's like, I look at old people a lot because usually they don't give a shit anymore. They've just given up. And there's a survey that they did where the number one reason that old people don't have as much drama and they're happier, is they say they, they cited they literally don't have time for it. Like literally they don't have time for it. And I found that so interesting. And it's like, well, if I'm going to eventually be that way when I'm 80, I might as well just start being that way now.

29:49And so they usually were like really comfortable footwear. And like they, they keep their surroundings like whatever weird peculiarities they have, they just accept them. And so I think a lot of like, if life is a long journey of self acceptance, I think the earlier you can accept your own peculiarities as just part of you rather than trying to justify by them or mold to what you, to the archetype that you think is acceptable within your social circle, at least for me, there's this period of discomfort when you change anything, because everyone around you wants you to fit within the label that they are comfortable with.

30:19But they also have the anchor of what you were before. Yeah, exactly. And so they try and, like, people don't like that. And so they're like, no, no, I like you in this box. So just say, I know, you're having a little thing right now. Don't worry, just, and they just wanna shove you back into it. And there's a lot of uncomfortable conversations that you have to have where it becomes really socially awkward. And so like, I said one the other day about like going home for the holidays and the reason I don't like doing it is, because often I have to confront a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time and they'll speak to me in a way that I don't like.

30:53And before that I would roll it off like whatever, no big deal, but I don't accept that. Didn't you tell Pido a family holiday a couple of years ago? Many. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I think. But that's the, when your friends start to say you've changed, it's because they don't know how to say you've grown. And because they see so few people who have, so it makes sense that they don't have that. So I see that as a lack of skill, not malice. Like it's not that they're bad people. They just don't even know it because so few people do change. So few people do grow. Have you seen this image? It's a person whose heart and head are flowers.

31:33It's kind of a 2D drawing. It's a bit of a sketch. And they say this person with the kind of smaller flower head and heart says you've changed and the person on the other side with this huge blooming thing says I Should hope so. Yeah. I Haven't seen it, but I see it in my head. Yeah, it's brilliant. I'm one of my friends George Mack told me this 5 years ago, I think, I'm astounded by how many people want to be spectacular in life, but also want to be normal. By being normal, you are, by definition, aiming for average. Normal people get normal results, exceptional people get exceptional results.

32:11You literally can't do what everyone else does and expect to not get what everyone else has got. By doing what everyone else does, you guarantee average results. Okay, so this comes down to everything that like business, I mean, obviously I come from the business and investing world. Like, if everyone is jumping on to crypto, like by the time you have all the information to make a perfect decision, it's too late. And by the time you have consensus, everyone's like, that's a good investment. It probably isn't because it's already been mispriced because it's already like it's already inflated and it's above what it's intrinsic value is.

32:45And so like good investors fundamentally can think for themselves and it's such an easy thing to say and such a hard thing to do And so it's being able to say if I shut myself in a room and I had to come up with a value for something and just use my own mind to come up with What I think this is worth it's that that answer that you get in a room in isolation with no internet connection That you believe in that number more than every single other person's and most people can't do that But like that ability and then what happens though is if you really have to believe in that rather than everyone else's you double check your fucking math.

33:21Because if it is different than everyone else's you have the up you like that is what opposite right. Right. And it's like and you have the potential to make a shitload of money or lose a ton of money because you didn't check your math. And so the more I've been reinforced for thinking independently in the beginning it's on small things and then you just continue to reinforce that cycle of huh. I came to this conclusion on my own. it seems different than everyone else's, but I think my thing makes sense. So I'm going to do that. How would you advise someone to overcome that regression to the mean, that pull to not make waves, to not be heterodox or non -typical when it comes to their decision -making?

34:03Because it's hard. You're talking about this internal conflict versus external conflict. How do you make the internal conflict more important than the external conflict. For me, I was more miserable trying to make everyone else happy than I am now with everyone else unhappy with me. And so I think like from the social group I had before I quit my job, if we're going all the way like ground zero to today, I talk to no one from that time of my life compared to today. And I was absolutely miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled. And I would say that the majority of those people probably don't like me today because I changed.

34:39I didn't do what I was supposed to do. He thinks he's so fancy now, et cetera, et cetera. And I think I'm just okay with that. And so I think coming to terms with the idea that I could be absolutely rejected by everyone I know. But like me, I was more okay with that because the alternative was I didn't want to live anymore. And so obviously there's degrees and there's continuums and there's stages of where people are at with that. But as that being the taken to a logical extreme, what I rather lived for them from the lift for me, I would rather be hated by everyone and like myself.

35:14This is a degree of honesty is the right word, but it's also too simple. Like being completely 100 % truthful with yourself. If that's the way, this is why I told you about the mode across the rally cross, a thing that made my house my love. Okay, so you know like Colin McCray, these guys that drive four wheel, there's the dude in the co -pilot seat and it's Five left -bend These guys that go to go and watch this are in the middle of Some fucking wood in airshire right in Scotland and it's pissing wet and it's November and they've got a poncho on and They get to drive for however long to get to this place You can even see thinking about it the hairs on my arms are standing up.

36:00This is how fucking dope it is So these guys are there and they see some dude in overcast rain freezing cold soaking wet go MMMT! And then they turn to turn to all of their boys and they're like, ah! Watching someone who loves Anything with that much purity Fies me up. It fires me like we love watching we don't watch it for what the cars are doing We watch it for what it does to the spectators and that degree of like just unincombed passion. Not being apologetic. Like they probably, they're probably wearing comfy shit. They're not wearing cowboy boots, you know what I mean? No one, they look like a large condom in this poncho.

36:42Do they care? They don't care. And that's purity. Yeah. That's truthfulness and honesty. And really, like what, what are you hoping to be able to look back on your life or for people to say after you're gone, if you don't do that, he was such a good guy and he never rocked the boat. He was such a good guy and he always conformed to our expectations. He was such a good guy and he was so predictable. Now people think and I did throughout a lot of my 20s, I thought that what people wanted from me was someone that they could easily predict. But I realized when I thought about the people that I loved in my life, I didn't love them because of how predictable they were.

37:37I loved them because of how unapologetically themselves they were. I have a friend who nearly ended a relationship that he's still with, who either the love of his life who's probably going to end up marrying because he refused to not sleep on the floor for six months as part of Alex Beck is doing it the moment. Like he's like, sleeping on the floor seems to be like a pretty dialed idea. And she's like, I'm not sleeping on the floor. Well, I am. So they didn't sleep together for like, you know, for like a long time. Like that's those are the people that you love and those are the people that you can, because they pay such a high price to do that.

38:13Yeah, you can be very reliable at presuming that they Mean what they're saying mm -hmm because if they didn't really mean what they're saying They would conform they would take take an easier path. I Love all of that My I was trying to kind of consolidate it for for myself and the listeners For me it just it comes down to truly valuing your opinion of yourself more than other people's opinion of you. And it's just, it's an easy thing to say and it's incredibly hard to do because that means that if you disagree with everyone else in the room, there's this meme that I love. I don't know if you've seen it.

38:56There's this little cartoon of this one little guy and then there's like an ocean of people that way and it just says yes, you're all wrong. And I just like, I feel like that meme, my, my, my, my brother and editor in the books in the battle against nihilism and, and, and towards truth. We send that meme back and forth to another one where we're like, yes, everyone is wrong about this word. Like we are right. And I think it's just being willing to, like, but the only way you can believe in a thing or an idea or even yourself is because you have the evidence behind you that supports that your belief isn't full of shit.

39:35So that when you're in that room and you come up with that one number and you say, I think everyone's wrong. I think this is actually what it's worth. You're not just making it up to say you believe something different. You actually have proof and evidence that you're not full of shit. And I think that's the work is like, I did a, I looked into a lot of the stuff on the, on the force leaping. I think it checks out. I'm gonna do it. Like I think everyone else is wrong. I think everyone else is wrong. And everyone's like, you're at it and you're like, I think you're wrong. And that's okay. You know what I mean?

40:06And it's just, most people can't do that. Just the idea of being weird is too much. Like just like, do you have a... Did you ever... This is quite old now. It's at least a decade old. I think it's called 50 Days of Rejection or 100 Days of Rejection. I love it already. So it's a series of experiments that you do every day for 100 days. Yeah. And there's a different one each day. And one of them is ask for a free coffee when you go to Starbucks. Oh, I love it. Just say, hey, can I have this free? Yeah. And it's, I don't know whether it escalates over time, but there's like weird stuff things that you do to people in public, things that blah, blah, blah, blah.

40:41And it's trying to overcome that, that it's sort of, it's in your throat, you know, when you feel that and you take cheeks, gap flush and everything kind of gets hot. You can embarrass. Around here. Yeah, it's that embarrassment, it's that shame, it's that, well, what if they think? Yeah. Why? Yeah. What if they think what? Yeah. So, yeah, I, someone should redo that. It's like a decade old now, but someone should redo. I think I'm certain it's called a hundred days of rejection. YouTube I do. That would be great YouTube I do. To do a hundred, a hundred days of rejection or whatever it is. All right, next one.

41:15Next one. I just want to, like, I promise you, if you can actually go through a hundred days of rejection, your life will change. Because you will realize that at the end of the hundred days, you're still alive and nothing changed. But it's, I'm going to die. Yeah. That's the fear. The fear is, I'm gonna ask for the coffee, and they're gonna say no, and then everyone's gonna laugh at me, and then I'm gonna be alone, and then I'm gonna be unshelted, and then I'll be dead. Yeah, it's catastrophized to death. We all do it. And so, I mean, obviously I come from a sales background, so getting people to say no to me is something that I'm now.

41:44If you've asked drunken, new castle girls, where they're going tonight, darling, for a decade and a half on the street, trying to give out wristbands for a free entry to a club night, no one wants to go to, you get good at rejection as well. That's what I honestly think that everyone is always going to campaign for the thing that they did, right? You're always going to say something along the lines of I think people can learn a lot from sales Yeah, and I'm always going to say I think people can learn a lot from being in club promo but like honestly dude the The insight that you get into human nature from doing that from seeing what do people object to and why do they object in that way and What happens if someone like gets physical with you because you tried to do and you go?

42:23Oh, well, I wasn't in the wrong. So deescalating this should actually be quite easy. And I can have faith that everyone's gonna see me as the right guy, even if somebody else took objection with what I was doing. So yeah, long story short, become a club promoter. All right, next one. There's a big difference between becoming known and becoming respected. Don't let an algorithm convince you otherwise.

42:49I mean, I think this is probably super pertinent for people in our position.

42:56But I'll go from the internet perspective and we can circle back to IRL. But I mean, a lot of people will make content. So obviously I have to make stuff for me too. Like, talk about artists making things for themselves. Like, I make most of my tweets or just like notes to self. But like, if I ever feel like I have to sacrifice who I am or the values that I believe in in in order to get more views or something like that. I see it happen more times than not because the algorithm and the views and the likes become kind of a proxy for conforming in their own way. Everyone likes this type of thing.

43:26Do more of that. And that makes me feel very like dance monkey dance. And I think there's few things that kill my soul more than that. And so I would rather, I'd rather the algorithm shut me off tomorrow and I continue to make stuff that I find interesting, that 10 people find interesting, saying that is actually the same stuff as me, then just have these viral hits that I feel like I'm Ronald McDonald in and just feel like I've completely lost my soul. And I do think, as a side note, that if you do the first one where you're intention is to maybe help find the 10 people who are really interested in your thing, you probably will create more of the viral hits.

44:02But when you saw for the other way, I think you accomplished neither. I have this theory that more creators fall out of favor because they become cringed than because they become irrelevant. I love that. Yeah, I love that. I think it's true. I think if you think about the thing that you do, almost anything that anybody is creating is public facing because it wasn't public facing, it would just be a hobby. Doing your painting because you love painting is a hobby. doing your painting to try and sell it is something that you do as a business or as a public project. The flywheel is so vicious in the positive direction and even more vicious in the negative direction.

44:46If it becomes cancerous or uncool or untrendy or catastrophic or cringe to be seen to be watching or listening to or consuming the thing that you make, it is you're permanently going to be swimming upstream and it is only going to get worse. Which is why you look at Shane Gillis is a really great example of this at the moment. He's someone who is great. It is craft, big platform, move to Austin, got all of the multipliers in place, but he isn't cringe. And because he's not cringe, if you've watched beautiful dogs, his Netflix special, it's not uncool. It's like there's this idea in publishing, because I've been doing my research ahead of the book.

45:29There's this idea in publishing called the Subway Test. Okay. Would someone be prepared to have the full dust jacket version of your book out on the subway? Okay. And if your book is like, stop erectile this function. Oh, it's gonna see the erection problem, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like no more flatulence today or something. Like if that's your book, it's gonna be very difficult. Or if it's written by somebody where it's like, like, oh, really don't want to do that. So, and this is the point where there are tons and tons and tons of people on the planet who have huge platforms that nobody respect.

46:07And I've seen, even within my seven -year career of doing this, the arc of people trade integrity for exposure and not be able to buy it back. Yeah. Yeah. Because there is no return policy on your integrity, on your reputation. And those people would give anything to be back in the Cool Kids Club. I mean, this is a, like I love this entire train.

46:39I was thinking like, what creates, like what's, what's timelessly not cringe, right? So like if cringe is the ultimate like what we don't want, than like what would what is forever not cringe and The only thing that I can like really think of is is just true authenticity, which is an overused word, but Again easy to say hard to do. I think what is what is forever cringe on the equal opposite side is is pandering Like whenever you're seeing as someone who's only doing stuff for other people's opinion approval likes whatever Especially double cringe when it's for your own personal gain And so if the equal opposite of that is something that is to my personal detriment, that is truly something that I believe in, it honestly doesn't matter what it is, because there are some people that probably believe things that I don't believe, but I genuinely think, based on what I see, that they genuinely believe it, and they don't really stand to gain much for believing it.

47:38There's no cringe there. It's just like, that man fucking believes that. And I think that some of the characters in our current you know, political sphere and things like that, like many people, you know, you say the word Trump and you have half the people who paid you and the other half that love you. And it's like, I think most people agree that he believes what he says. Now, whether you believe the content of what he's saying is a different story, but I don't think many people have called him as somebody who's like, I think he's, he doesn't really think that about himself. Like, no, I think he really does.

48:10And even, I'm just gonna push the edges because that's where you have to like explore the fringe. Look at someone like Kanye, who's been borderline canceled for, I mean, multiple times, right? But like, why is Kanye quote uncancelable? Because he hasn't been, right? Not really. Like if he came out tomorrow with a hit album, I'll bet you it would fucking sell. Because I think that at least for me, from what I see, I think he does what he believes. And people might be like, he's mentally unstable. There's all these other things, but no one thinks he's being fake. And I think that if that becomes the North Star of I just never wanna become cringe, then it's just never be fake.

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49:21When I started working with Marik Metastas' room was 495, which isn't super low, but isn't great, and after six months of working with them, it was at 1 ,000 and six. So in less than six months, they more than doubled my testosterone without using TRT. Right now, you can get the exact same blood panel and service that I got with a 10 % discount by going to the link in the description below or heading to marichealth .com slash modern wisdom and the code modernwistem. Check out that marekhealth .com slash modernwistem and modernwistem. Check out I think that avoiding cringe and aligning authenticity as best you can and it's a permanent battle because you are not inside of a vacuum and you see other people doing things and there is temptation and you need to respond to the audience's feedback in some regard or else you're just going to be making something that nobody fucking cares about, but you also need to not compromise too much.

50:11One of your old ones related to this, people are attracted to authenticity, but it's hard to define for me. Here's my best attempt. True alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do. The hardest part is realizing that our thoughts are fucked and that we have to fix them instead of faking the next two. Oh, heartedly agree. You said it. Man, yeah, that's dead on. I've got a really cool idea. Herostatic fame. Many people would rather be hated than unknown. In ancient Greece, Herastratus burned down the temple of Artemis purely so that he would be remembered. Nowadays, we have nuisance influences who stream themselves committing crimes and harassing people purely for clout, herastatic fame.

51:02Yeah, that's like the you gain the world, but you lose your soul kind of. I mean, I, I'm also the last person to judge. And so like, if that's what you want, then by all means, I don't think it's what people want. I think that they, they think it's what they want. I've been playing with this idea or this name, one of the concepts that the book will be focused on intentionalism and essentialism by Greg McEwan's one of my favorite ever bucks and I figured it would be a nice like hat nod. Doing what you mean to do and wanting what you want to want is so fucking hard to do and so rare because we're built to conform.

51:45I think one of the my life goals and I can summarize it in a question, but is to be fearless. And it's, I mean, equal opposite courage is another word. But I love this question, which is, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And I just, I love thinking about that when I'm thinking about big life decisions. Like, what would I do if I weren't afraid? And it's usually like the big one, the bigger thing that I really want to do, but I'm afraid to do it. It's like, that's what I should do. And to your point about, you had the five things that you told your team. The one that we have is originally it was something that we called one of one, which is make only things that we can make.

52:28Like, you'll never see a Coca -Cola business breakdown from Alex Ramonesy because anyone can do a Coca -Cola business breakdown. That's not one of one content. But if I say I doubled the sales of this company by implementing these four things, no one else could say that. No one else did it, right? So it's one of one. And so as the book luncheon, when it came, we took one of one and it became this big massive thing and it wasn't, it stopped being about like, what can only do things that only we can do. It was about doing things that we didn't even know we could do yet, which became one of zero.

53:00And that's why that became the brand that I'm going to continue to wear for the next few years and build that association. But I think that that kind of encapsulates my personal life goal, which is like, what But what would I do if I weren't afraid? And what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? And the idea that I will never wish for fewer epic stories at the end of my life. And I've never regretted failures. I've always regretted things that I didn't try. And so just along those lines of trying to create more bias internally towards action rather than inaction and normalizing consequences of failure as we said earlier, winner, learn.

53:40And I think that little frame, believe it or not, for anyone who's like on the teetering edge of like, what should I do that thing? When I was debating quitting my job, which is still the hardest decision I've made to this day, still of the many that I've made, was I figured that if I didn't make the entrepreneurship thing work, I would have a hell of a story for business school. And that was actually like the reasoned argument that I gave myself for being willing to quit. Was that I think that with my experience I'll still be able to get a job and I'll have a really cool story of Entrepreneurship that I could use to apply to get into business school and then eventually get a job later and so most times We could taskifies any failure to death, right?

54:22Which is like I'm gonna I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna sell my money I'm gonna be homeless no one's gonna talk to me. I'm gonna die, right? But like if you if you play it out two natural steps Like okay, I lose everything. What do I do? I would probably have a cow or floor that someone would lend me. Because at least socially, I haven't been, I haven't fucked everyone I know. And so I have that. It's like, okay, so I would have some capacity to do that. Okay, is there anything that I could do in the meantime in order to make money? Well, sure, I could drive Uber and strip. And I've already, you know, I've done this story before, but for me that was genuinely my plan B because I knew that I could probably make 70, 80 grand a year driving Uber.

54:59I could probably make 150 stripping, maybe 200. Stripping with the gay bars, the guys pay better. And then, you know, boom, I've got $280 ,000 a year. I could live on the floor and then I could restart again. And so that's because I don't have a lot of shame with that kind of stuff. That's like that doesn't matter to me. But I think playing out the fear, Laila says this and I love it, but that fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And so it looks like this ocean that you're going to step into and drown. But as soon as you step into it, you realize it was not that deep at all. And you can keep walking through it.

55:33And I just love that visual because a lot of times when it's like we have this anxiety you run this big decision we have to make, if you actually take the step and realize that it's not death, you're not going to drown immediately. There's plenty of other steps you can take from there, even if you get a little wet. They tell you my story about a friend who went through a consolation and was worried it was a coward? Oh, like a public consolation thing. Okay. So I went to dinner quite a while ago now with this guy that I was pretty interested it in and he knew what I did and we went sort of bumped into each other and what you're doing.

56:06Let's go for dinner. And I knew about the situation that he'd been through but he didn't know that I knew. So I was like, tell me, like, there's no pressure and he was able to be unencumbered. And basically he went through like a tough cancellation where kind of the whole world came down to bear on him. And he was telling me this story. I was in very interesting time as like being very reflective. And he said, my whole life I'd been worried that I was a coward. It's terrified that I was a coward. But I'd never been through a situation where I'd had to bring absolutely everything to bear on my life.

56:46And I'm a hard man and I like to hang around with hard man and I like to shoot guns and do jiu jitsu and be around Navy SEALs and stuff like that. But I always had this fear in the back of my mind that I might secretly be a coward. And then he said, the cancellation thing happened and it wasn't a very difficult one -wrap max. It wasn't a really hard crossfit workout. It was something outside of his control. And he used this term that I love and he said, I could always hear my better self clearing his throat in the room next door. And I always wondered what would happen if I had to really, really wrangle everything if the whole world came crashing down on me.

57:27And I wanted to work out whether or not I was a coward. He said, thankfully he kicked the door in and came through. But I just love that I could always hear my better self clearing his throat in the room next door. But he'd never been fully tested. It's done lots of hard things, a lot of acclaim, very successful, blah, blah, blah. But we all know that's your thing, right? Like, but I'll know about whether or not you've left something on the table. And, uh, yeah. He... there was always just 5 % still in the tank when he was doing things. But how he felt about how invested he was. He always had to get out of jail free card in one way or another.

58:04And, uh... yeah, I love that. I'd fucking... I could always hear my better self clearing his throat in the room next door. two things on that. So I think if we're consolidating some of the points we're making earlier, the but all know refrain, I think that a lot of the personal excellence comes down to making the but all know more important than the but everyone, what will everyone else think? Because the, I think the true test of whether you're a quote perfectionist or not is if everyone else in the room says it's exceptional. And then you say, but I'll know it's not because I don't think it's exceptionally yet.

58:44If you still break what everyone else believes is beautiful so that you can make the thing that you make it the way you want it to make it the way you want it to be, I think that is probably like the the truest test of whether or not you really do value your own opinion over those of other peoples. And if you really want to be true to the quote the art, whatever your art is, I'm using it as a generic term. It could be the career or the even like the ex the the financial projections that you're supposed to do at your company, like there is a way you could do it and do it absolutely fucking excellent.

59:16And there's a way you could do it that you could phone it in and probably not get in trouble. But the things that you know and then you'd be the type of person who always phones it in and that to me is disgusting. And that would make me disgusted with me and that is the thing that would make me want to peel my skin off because I would hate me. And I think that's why so many people do hate them because because they do settle and they do make these things and they do know and still ignore it. And so they ignore the man in the other room whose cleaners throat and they shut the door and they lock it and they never let that guy in.

59:44And so they look like everyone else, they act like everyone else and they get what everyone else gets. America was built on the backs of men who smoked cigarettes, drove without seatbelts and had bacon for breakfast. If you miss your biohacking routine this morning, you're going to be okay. There's a time for leverage, but there's also a time for violence, which is just brute force. People get really obsessed with optimal, which is getting the most bang for your book, but there's also maximizing, which is just getting the most books. You lose more life trying to optimize everything than just living it.

1:00:18The stress of trying to be perfect is killing you more quickly than your imperfections. Hmm.

1:00:29I think that's an ode to being willing to take huge amounts of imperfect action towards one goal and being willing to sacrifice other things for an extended period of time despite the fact that other people say they're making a sacrifice. Like when we enter seasons, I call it the season of no, which is where you have extended duration where I say no to almost everything. and most people say that's unbalanced. And they hurl that as though it's a bad thing. They're like, that's so unbalanced. You're like, yes, that's the point. Because if I had a balanced outcome, then I won't have the outsized return on this one thing.

1:01:07And so again, there's so many of these little insults that people will throw at you. Like, you're unbalanced, you changed. You, that they intend as insults. But if you actually don't take your society program response and say, oh, they mean to insult me. But if you actually think about what they're saying, they're saying something that's true. And then we just need to be okay with that truth because that was the choice we made to begin with. And so I think about that a lot, which is like how many things do people tell me that they intend to and saw me with that I can take of the compliment? Didn't someone bump into Leila walking down the street?

1:01:45It happened so recently. So yeah, we're walking in the street. someone bumps into her. Like we don't always walk side by side because there's lots of people. So we like, split up sometimes. Anyway, she comes back to me and she was like, guess what this guy just said? And I was like, what? And she was like, he called me a skinny bitch. And I was like, what? But she seemed so happy. And I was like, and I was like, like I just kind of shook my head like tell me more, like explain. And she was like, I mean, he said I was skinny.

1:02:13And I was like, this is the perfect example of him hurling an insult and her choosing not to be insulted. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Really? Yeah. Do you really mean it? Yeah. It's like, I wonder how many times we've been insulted, even in my younger days where someone said something to me that if I had my current brain, I could have been like, you really mean it? Thanks, man. And yeah, so I'm balanced. I remember I took that as such an insult for such a long period of time. Now part of that was because when I was being brought up, balance was like one of the big frames of my household was like, you have to be balanced, which really just meant you have to be awesomen everything.

1:02:55But balance was the words of being unbalanced was a term that was used as an insult. And so for so many years I wanted to be balanced. But then I was like, well, nothing great was ever achieved by people who tried to be great at all things. And so I was like, okay, I'm just not gonna, I might not have a great relationship for a long period of time. I mean, there was like a lot of people don't know this, but in the early days of our relationship, even when we were married, I told it for the first three years, I said the business comes before marriage. So a lot of people don't know that. And I was like, well, to me it made sense.

1:03:29It was like most people break up over money. The business makes money, so the business feeds us, and then we will be okay. That was kind of my thinking around it. And we eventually flipped that to like if we're good, the business will be fine. I took three years to get there. But all that to say like, I think having periods of imbalance and maybe to be fair, if I hadn't at that priority at that time, maybe Jim Walsh wouldn't have been what it became. And so I can't look back and say like I should have done it different because it's really easy to say that now. But like I might not be here to say that if I had been that way.

1:04:05All of the Birkman's got this great frame where he talks about choosing advance what you're going to suck at. It's in 4 ,000 weeks. And if you are a type A go getter person who has what I call the curse of competence, your options in life are restricted more by what you choose than what you can do. You will feel disquiet when something that you used to be great at begins to slip because you've focused your attention elsewhere. You used to be in really great shape. You said that one of your goals this year was to get a raise or to be able to buy your first house or to find a partner or to do whatever.

1:04:44Hey, guess what? If you're spending four or five nights a week going to places where you can maybe date or going out and date or doing whatever, you're probably not gonna have as much time to dedicate to the gym. If you want to get that raise or be able to save for your first house or whatever, you're gonna have to work later, which maybe means that your friends are gonna drop off. If you pick whatever the thing is, there is a price that you begin to pay. And this cycle began for me so frequently to the back end of my 20s, where I would dedicate myself to a thing than something else would begin to slip.

1:05:14So I would then go, ooh, I'll just give a little bit. I'll just give a little bit to that. And it's not an additive system, it's multiplicative. It's not two plus like three, it's two times three. And that means that the more that you attend to the thing that you say that you're going to do, the more the gains accrue to you. And then you can still pivot back, but you need to periodize things. And this is a frame that I wish, even now it's still something that I struggle with, realizing that now isn't forever. The thing that you're doing right now doesn't need to be forever. If you are coming out the back of the searching for the partner thing and you're like, hey, guess what, I get 15 pounds.

1:05:58So all right, well, dedicate yourself for the next six months to going to the gym, but this isn't the rest of your life Right. And once that thing's done. Oh, well, guess what? I'm back to, you know, 12 % body fat. I feel great about myself What's next? It's not forever. Yeah, it's just for now. Yes We have a frame that we actually use a lot I always think about these things from a business context, but they end up retroactively, you know, applying to life But when we're making big strategic decisions, we say like which problems would we prefer? And so rather than talking about like the gains and what's the upside, if we have like, you know, let's say we're going to make a big investment in software for this company, or we're going to make a big, you know, huge, a new service line, or we're going to just decide to develop a physical product, right?

1:06:39I mean, I know you're literally on the just back half of a big decision like this yourself. It's like, okay, let's imagine what the problems are going to be if we decide to do this new service category. Well, some people are going to complain that they're not getting results from this thing. We're going to have a ton, like we might have some negative reviews in the short term that we're going to have to deal with. Like let's look at what happens when one of our favorite customers tells the fuck off. Like, like, let's really sit in what each of these problems is. And then when we spell out all of the problems, and we don't even think about the upside, say which of these problems do we prefer and which are we more equipped to deal with?

1:07:15Sometimes we have really amazing innovation and in my opinion, like really solid decision -making think that comes afterwards that minimizes kind of the post decision regret, because we also know what negatives would have come with the path unchosen. Because most times like our regrets come from the path unchosen because we imagine it only with the upside. We only think about, I think there's there's a book that where a girl lives many different versions of her life. And midnight library, yes. And the thing is that there's these pieces of her life that she imagines are going to be amazing, but then she realizes her best friend's dead or all of a sudden she's pregnant.

1:07:54And you're like, whoa, what happened? And so we don't take into account on the paths not taken the things that we would have lost along the way. And so I think really good decision making and also regretmendimization is that when you make the decision, you think about the downsides too and you remember what those downsides are. And for me, that has been one of my strongest frames for like, I didn't decide to do that. Were all that, oh yeah, those were a lot, I'm glad, those are problems I'm very happy I don't have to deal with now. In other news, this episode is brought to you by... Nomatic. You might have seen that I recently was on the road for a full 28 days using just hand luggage because hold luggage is a siaop meant to keep you poor and late and almost everything is down to this backpack and the carry on that I was using.

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1:09:05If you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Head to the link in the show notes below or go to nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. use the code modern wisdom at checkout, very 20 % discount off everything sight wide. That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Thinking about the perils of overoptimization is something I brought up with Heberman last year. And you know, I think a lot of people, I have a friend who's a very well known DJ that told me he was falling out of love with DJing because he knew that it was damaging his sleep and because he knew how important sleep was to performance that he'd kind of got him, the bar stool had been turned upside down a little bit and the thing that he was trying to do was being sacrificed for the thing which is supposed to facilitate it.

1:09:54And that's where the, you lose more life trying to optimize everything than just living it. The stress of trying to be perfect is killing you more quickly than you were in perfections. All right, so I'm glad we came back to optimization because there's obviously on the extreme, there's guys like Brian Johnson with Blueprint who are trying to like, live to 200 or live forever. And I respect that, I respect dedication to anything, always. And interestingly around, I've always been a maximizer. So I've actually not really been an optimizer in my life. And it's like, as soon as I have an input output equation where it's like N equals X and it's like, and if I want 10 X, I do 10 N, I'm like, great.

1:10:34Then can we do a thousand N? Like I just want to do as much of that as I can like possible. But when we, like I love competitors who like optimizing because I always see it as a weakness because it's so easy to exploit. It's like, oh, you need your eight hours of sleep or you need your morning routine or if you don't have your supplements, you're just totally fucked or like, I didn't have my coffee this morning, so I can't function. Like, I love to compete against people like that because they're so easy to break. It's fragile. Yeah. And so what happens is the optimizations become superstition.

1:11:07Correct. And so my fear around, and maybe I take a more extreme stance on this, but like, I've always wanted to be able to, with an internet connection and a laptop and a fold out chair, go make money. And always have that as my north star that anything else is extra. And I feel like I lose more quickly when I get into this optimization cycle around because I remember years ago I bought one of those rings that's tractor sleep and I kept trying to like set sleep PRs and you can only get so high anyways. And then I started stressing more about not hitting sleep PR that I was sleeping worse than when I wasn't tracking it.

1:11:52And so then I was like, well, fuck this thing. And I slept fine the next night. And so obviously, microcosm, I'm a big believer in tracking progress in general. But just the idea that we become so overly romantic around these things that sometimes you just have to break shit. And sometimes you have to be violent. And sometimes when you're on your journey, you're not gonna sleep much. And you're gonna, you're gonna, like, there was a two year period where I did turnarounds for gyms. I flew around the nation every month out doing a gymp. I ate out of gas stations and I ate gas station food and I gained weight during that period of time.

1:12:26And it was for then and not forever and I'm in shape now and so whatever, who cares? And so like I used to tell this when I was selling weight lost to people I'd say like who cares if you get in shape for six weeks out of 80 years. And like right as they're about to start to start to remember, so I was like, you wanna sign, and then this is how I would sell longer memberships, but like it's also true. It's like you wanna sign up for the six weeks, but like Susan, like who cares if you lose 20 pounds and you're still overweight six weeks from now and then you gain it back the next six weeks and you're still the exact same weight for the rest of your life.

1:12:57And so I just I think the absolute dedication and maximization so that becomes a part of your identity and your character has been one of the outsized returns that I've gotten in my life and just being absolutely willing to sec like I'm pretty violent about this but like list all the things that you aren't willing to give up for the dreams that you have And that is what the person who will be chew is willing to give up. There's a phenomenal blog post that talks about why guys aren't getting girlfriends. This is pre -modern mating crisis. It's not to do with imbalances on Tinder and told girl problem and all that stuff.

1:13:37It's a guy who thinks that the bare minimum is acceptable. So he talks about how I'm always on time. And you know, I hold the door open. And I say, please, and thank you. And I'm nice to my mum. And the dude, I'll never forget it. There's this line in the blog post with the guy. He's like having this pretend dialogue with this imaginary person and goes, so fucking what? There's a guy who does all of those things and he plays the guitar. LAUGHTER Well, it's like the song lyric, like, baby, you the whole package and you pay your taxes. Yeah, I mean, I think also to the same degree, I mean, like, I'm not meeting whatever expert, like, no idea, I got married early, did all the things that, you know, whatever you're not supposed to do.

1:14:23But yeah, and yet,

1:14:28if you, like, if you're true to you, like, what's the most uncrinch thing, right? Is you being you. So I'm pretty sure that I turned away plenty of girls. They were like, this guy's successful. He's in shape, you know, decent looking, strikingly handsome. But they'd meet me and they'd be like, what a fucking weirdo. But the thing is, is like, like, and I remember I had, there were so many girls that I was like, you're pretty and I just don't care at all. Hahaha.

1:15:04Hahaha. Hahaha.

1:15:09And so, I like, I just, I wanted someone who got my peculiarities. Yeah. Who was like not only like accepting of them, but just like down for it. And so, I've, I walked through most of my, and to be fair, as a side note, for anybody who like wants to quote be exceptional, you're going to be different and people are going to think you're weird and like you might not get second dates. But real real, you're not gonna want the second date too because they're not like you. Like, when you get unplugged, you're like, oh wow, everyone's a sheep. This is weird. And you just go on a zillion first dates to be like, you had another one.

1:15:41You had another one. And every once in a while, you see a glimmer in someone who they're like, oh, you think for yourself. Like, you can make your own conclusions. I remember when Layla and I went on our first date, we went at a frozen yogurt store. And so of course, I'm like, so you know how they make their money here, right? I was like, so these things weigh this. they charged this per ounce and I was like breaking this whole thing down. And she was like, oh yeah, and they do this in this. And I was like, wait, you see this too? Like you, it wasn't like just like Alex just talking about the child of the fucking sixth sense or whatever.

1:16:08Oh, so excited because normally I would just have to like talk, I would talk about the stuff that at least I like to talk about because then we'd pass that. Not good dating strategy. Maybe I'm just going to entertain myself. Yeah. But then she also like talk about the stuff and I was like, holy shit. What's the alternative? The alternative is to find someone who falls in love with a role that you're playing. Right. That's the best that you can hope for. Right. And then lock yourself in to a future of having to perform in a way that this person has become accustomed to. And there's nothing that can be more lonely than I can possibly imagine, and then pretending every single hour of every day that you're someone you're not.

1:16:43Do you know who Dr. Robert Glover is? You wrote No More Mr. Nice Guy? No, but I like the title. Had him on the podcast last week. This guy is a fucking boss. So cool. Like mid 60s are something now. Huge go to... Smokes are great. Probably rip starts. This office by the way is completely... It's like smoking enabled in Rym Vegas. And he had three essences of an attractive man. I think it's a really lovely frame. The essence of an attractive man. He's comfortable in his own skin. He knows where he's going. And he has fun while he's going that. Nailed. Nailed. So good. So good. But like that. Well, if you think about that as, okay, so if you're in like even like an attractive man, whether you're married or not, like I mean, on the flip side, it's like, do you want to be married and then choose to become unattractive?

1:17:35Well, no, of course not. And so it's like, if those are three ideals, it's like you have, you have direction in your life. You're internally comfortable. And the fun part is what makes you would, I mean, partially attractive. And now mind you, if you just have one of the three, you will find a mate who's a track. Like if you just know with all your fucking soul you're going somewhere, people will wanna rally behind you. Even if you're not having fun, and even if you're not that small. You're not that small. Right, and even if you're not that comfortable on your own skin, but you're like, that guy, no matter what, he's gonna fucking get there.

1:18:05On the flip side, if you don't know where you're going, and you don't even have much fun, but you're like, that guy is comfortable. Like, say what you want, but that guy is good with him. That's an, like, that'll look like if you just had one. And if you just have a shitload of funny, don't know where you're going and you're not that comfortable like you'll still have people I probably prefer the first two to the third but you know but like as ideals like fuck very strong The only insults that hurt are the ones we believe Next time someone insults you remember they're going to die Everyone will forget about them and if no one will remember them then you might as well forget about them now they are irrelevant, your dream, your actions, your outcomes.

1:18:48So now you know what the insides of my head looks like. I mean, I put almost everything immediately to death and that's like maybe it's coping in a mechanism, maybe it's perspective mechanism, but like you want to hear. I was really strongly considering having a parody tweet profile of my own that I also run, that no one would know that I run, that is just like all my very, very controversial beliefs. But I'll throw a taster out now. Murder is just picking when someone dies. So it's like if you hate someone, it's like you can just look at them be like, oh, you're gonna die eventually. And so like the idea is like, in your mind, you could murder every enemy you have.

1:19:38You just don't get to pick the time. but I just find that such a, murder only changes when, not that someone's going to die. And so if you think about retribution on someone's like, this person said this thing to me, I want to kill him. It's like, oh no, you don't even have to, they'll die. They're gonna die already. Like you don't even have to like, don't worry about it. They're gonna die. And so it's hunt so silly, but just connecting those two dots, I was like, wow, that's incredibly peace giving. So like, why have a vendetta, when life will take care of them for me? And so I just like, you know, as a totally different frame, I was talking to somebody who has cancer in my life and they were like really concerned They're like this has only as a 95 % mortality rate over the next five years and you know me being me I was like well, you know 70 year olds probably have a 60 % mortality rate over the next five years anyways I was like and life has a hundred percent mortality rate so you know Worse yes, but like how much worse and so like they didn't think it was funny, but But it was intended to be comforting.

1:20:43It didn't succeed. But all that to say, these things that people cast on us, it's just whispers in the wind, right? Like if we think that our whole meaning is so infinitesimal, the idea that someone else can influence our trajectory when they themselves would disappear and become irrelevant seem so silly to me. And they don't have our best interests at heart. No, they have the opposite of our best interests. They are literally trying to destroy you. What about the only insults that hurt other ones we believe? What about that? Oh yeah. Well, I, because I like other people get offended with things.

1:21:23And then I've also had times where someone says something with the intention to insult, and it doesn't, and I was like, how can I get that to happen every time? And so it's the classic example of, you know, Chris, you have green hair and then you would say, Whatever, sure, but you don't believe it. So it doesn't really matter. And so I think there's there's a there's kind of a dual -sided like lesson at least for me in this is that when we are insulted I try and pay attention to it because I think okay Either there's something here that they're right about and that I don't like about myself in which case the response is too great And that's what's so frightening.

1:22:00And so it's like if someone, to recently had someone, someone made something blasting me about, I don't go home for the holidays. I mean, this whole, I made this video about it. And in the first five seconds of the video, of course, I'm like, if you love your family, fucking go home. This is not, this is for everybody else, right? But of course, no one actually watches that who makes that piece of content. And so they just went on this tirade about me. And I just said, God, I suck, period, as my comment. it. And because there's no, the stoic response to hate is to agree and one up. So level one is agree.

1:22:35So someone says, Alex, you're fucking it and you're like, believe me, if you knew half of it, you'd think more than that. Because it's the only way you can respond. And so my mental judo for these things, and I've just, I try to, now the good news for you and I is that we get lots of practice, right? Every day we have people hating on us. And so I get to, I get to practice. So like, people, people meet you in real life and they in the triad when it's all, you're like, dude, I have so many reps on this. I'm like, oh, good. And so is this like, can I want up their install? Like if someone installs me, it's like, dude, let me do believe you think that's good.

1:23:06Let me tell you how to really get me, right? And so just the frame of agreement evaporates conflict. Yeah, that's your thing about most people are more interested in winning than being right. Yeah. So you just say, sure. You're right. Yeah, Alex, like, you're an idiot. All of your business advice is terrible. I'd be like, you're right. Now what? Where do we go from here? Right? Wasn't that fun? And so we talk like, because I like it human behavior a lot, but it's called, it's an extinguishing event. So like when you pull a slot machine, when null is the outcome, it nullifies. Agreement is the ultimate nullifier for insults.

1:23:50And I think that like the faster I reprogram that so it's like if you ever feel insulted either like first is it is it true like if you are insulted you believe them. Okay, do I believe them because there's an element of truth if there's an element of truth why am I insulting I should agree with them. It's just because we have some ego behind it like I want to be perceived a certain way. Or maybe because it's poking a hole, it's wedging into the inauthenticity that someone has brought into the light something which we thought we were able to keep in private. One of my other life goals is to die with no secrets.

1:24:26Well, just be... Because if we think about, at least for me, if I think about authenticity, to be seen as I truly am, then I would have no secrets. And I try, you know, I try really hard to not hold anything back content or otherwise. So that I don't need to have, I don't want to have a hundred faces. Because if you always have something in the back room that it means that to these people you're this person and this is in the back room. These people you're this person in the back room. But the fewer back rooms I have, the more everyone is in one room and I can be just me. And that means that some people will hate me and some people will like me, but they will actually like or hate me, not the idea or some facet like we were saying earlier, like when you're in a relationship putting on the act and putting being the performer, they're not hating the idea of me.

1:25:14They actually hate me. And at least there's some weirdness about like, at least that's true. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the Launch Your Online Shop phase to the first real -life store stage, to the did we just hit a million orders stage, Shopify can support you every step of the way. From that all in one e -commerce platform to that in -person POS system, Whatever you're selling and wherever you're selling it, Shopify has got you covered. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, 36 % better on average compared to other leading e -commerce platforms.

1:25:50Shopify powers 10 % of all e -commerce in the United States, including huge brands, like Gymshark and Mybrand, Utonic. We literally launched Utonic on Shopify because it's the best platform for e -commerce. So, if you want to start selling without learning to code or design, this is where to start. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to shopify .com slash modern wisdom, all lowercase. That shopify .com slash modern wisdom to grow your business now no matter what stage you're in. There's a lesson that I learned from Rob Henderson, which is like an interesting addition to what we're talking about here.

1:26:28And he asked the question, why do we feel insulted or why do our cheeks flush when and somebody accuses us of something that we know that we haven't done. And the issue here is that we don't exist in a vacuum and we care about other people's interpretations of us. And the disinformation campaign, even if it's grounded in falsehood, can still negatively impact our status. So even if you know that this isn't true and all of the rest of it, functionally to everybody that isn't you or maybe many people that aren't you or maybe some people who are influential that aren't you, This can have the same impact as if it was true.

1:27:09So that, the man being an island and I have faith in my own word, as soon as you start to build this out, there's a reason for trepidation there. I think so, I was trying to think about what are counter examples. So, if someone attacks your character, so let's say someone comes out and says, Alex did some sort of sexual allegation or something like that, that I know isn't true, whatever, but they say that. Now that's gonna smurch my reputation right now. I can't be like, you're right. And if you really knew, right, right? So I can't

1:27:46if you knew the half of it. So like, so like those are the situations, right? So like, if someone just says like, you're, you know, you're full of shit or your business as vice is bad or whatever than that's one thing. But in those situations, the only counter that I have seen is to be louder. And so if someone increases the volume on something, I don't believe that you draw attention to that person. I actually, I've more or less not been in the, I'm going to address someone directly. But I make counter what this person says without addressing them and be 10 times bigger and louder about it as A way to counteract that and so like I had a bad reputation in college, which I I've shared some of that in my story before Um, and the reputation was that I was a flanderer and was you know all about girls and whatever and so I wanted to not have the reputation And so it wasn't like I was gonna go talk to those girls and be like I need you to work in your story um, I had to make my actions so much louder that I was no longer going to be that way for an extended period of time to counteract that thing.

1:28:55And so if we're thinking about like how to respond to people being shitty to you, if you believe what they say and it's true, agree and one up. If what they say is something that isn't true but does besmirch your reputation, then you can only be respond by being louder with the truth. And I think that like I think about these things obviously weren't a position we have to deal with this all the time as like almost playbooks for dealing with Shots well, this is One of the things that people got wrong about Dave Port noise cancellation So even though you got cancelled Dave had Sex with maybe two two or three girls that sold the story no separately.

1:29:39Oh, okay. So the story to the Atlantic I think Pussingham Sold a story to someone and they were looking around and I think they're still going and pretty sure that only a couple of months ago They tried to notify some pizza event that he was doing do you know that we're investigating him about that and then he called him out so What's happened is there's been million me to allegation things that have come across people saw the way that Dave Portnoy responded he came out with the fences is absolutely swinging. Like swinging so hard said, this is fucking ball, it's baseless. I think you maybe even somehow had video evidence or audio evidence or some kind maybe internal CCTV cameras.

1:30:20Basically, all of this stuff is dog shit. Yeah. People took Dave Portney didn't take any shit and he didn't back down and he didn't do an apology and he didn't do the rest. It's like, yeah, guess why? Because he didn't do it. Because he wasn't in the wrong. If you are the guy that did do the thing, you don't have that, that's a firm foundation. What you're doing there is just creating this cathedral of lies and dog shit on top of a sand castle of lies and dog shit. Which would then get found out and you'll get hit, you'll get slimed, ten times. Way, way, way harder. Yeah, rightfully so, to be fair.

1:30:55But that's the thing. So learning, okay, why did he do this particular tactic? Well, he ran that play because the basis of where he was at allowed him to. it. Loudest shit about the truth. One thing that we talked about earlier with canceling and I have so relatively contrary and views on canceling. I genuinely believe that you cannot be canceled. You only can only be canceled in two ways. You can be canceled if you choose to stop making content, stop being public or all means and methods and channels of communication that you do not control remove you from it. So like for example, there's tape, right?

1:31:34And he had his, like he's not allowed to be on the platforms, but they allow his content being on the platform. So has he been canceled? No, I would argue not. And it's still other platforms. And he continues to make content. So you only, so to me, this is actually really, I don't know, heartwarming security feeling. I get warm and fuzzy around that reassuring. Thank you. Because it means that cancellation is you have to agree to be canceled. No matter how bad, like if you mess up the platform one. Yeah, if they had AI face recognizing him and have eliminated from the platform, he would be canceled.

1:32:09Like, there's no method of communication outside of a person who'd have no leverage, agreed. But barring that, if you continue to make content, no matter what you did, people will find out about you. More people will know it about you and your message will get disseminated And whether you choose to like recant something that you did or you know like right or wrong apologize or Do what Dave did and say like this is complete Bollocks, he's my little UK term and just be even louder You choose to be canceled and I I like that because I'd I like to have as many things under my controls again Yeah The I've been like Thinking about the stryson defect because everyone's always said you know cancellation makes people bigger I think that is cope.

1:32:58I think it's a massive cope. I don't think the cancellation makes people bigger. Alex Jones, for instance, when he got, he got about as close to unperson I think as you can get. Very, very difficult. I wasn't seeing, for the last whatever, five years, eight years whenever he got taken off Twitter, I wasn't seeing him on YouTube unless he was on somebody else's show. I wasn't seeing him on Instagram. I wasn't seeing him on Twitter. Steve will do it as a good example as well. He can't even be in the background of other people's YouTube videos. And he's got shares and rumble and he's doing all this other stuff.

1:33:32But still, that's a pretty big, unpersoning. And I think it's kind of cope to say, oh, but so many more people are searching them. The entire internet is built on convenience. If you think that making it more inconvenient for someone to access someone makes them bigger, you are fundamentally forgetting human nature. Now maybe in this beautifully utilitarian rational view of the world, the person that wants to see the thing, they might go and get the thing, but it's like, hey, guess what? Like TikTok's got an unlimited scroll. And they're just going to keep going. And if they don't appear, they don't appear.

1:34:04And to draw this into IRL for everyone who's like, okay, well, that might be convenient for Alex Jones or not. Like he can't, or he can't or can't be canceled, whatever. I think that, at least for me, the through line on this is, like, if you do some embarrassing thing, which happens, we're human. The only way it compounds into being like a much bigger problem is if you become a recluse, you choose to not go out, you choose to not, you choose to disassociate with everyone else. Like you choose to agree to the terms that the people around you are telling you you have to agree to. And that's where I think you can say no.

1:34:35Destiny's got this idea. He told me this story. I think it was like VidCon or VidSummit 2012. And Destiny's sprayed it around a bit in his career. And he was at this huge YouTuber convention. And his ex -girlfriend or something got access to his Twitter account and leaked his dick pics on his Twitter while he's at this vid summit thing surrounded by his peers. So he's trending. So it's not only, oh my god, look what's happening on the internet. It's, oh my god, the internet has now become real life. And it's in front of me and the thousands and thousands of people and they all know what's going on.

1:35:10And you know, finding Nemo just keeps swimming, just keeps swimming from Dory. His is just keeps streaming. He says, everybody only remembers the last four streams. So sure enough, you went on first stream, just the chat is lit up, taken the piss out of him and you know, like here it is. Second one, still lots and lots and lots of jokes. Third one, like a few less, and then fourth one is pretty much gone. After four streams. It's not funny, but we've all heard it. Yeah, so true Jordi got Like a British UK YouTube a big guy and a few years ago his DMs got leaked from his verified Instagram account saying some like pretty dirty sex stuff to a girl and She was a Vage she was a Vage.

1:35:54Yeah, there was no it was like it was kind of fine. I guess it was internet It was intimate and like embarrassing or whatever for him, but he He was silent, pretty much silent for five days, and then got probably the best roast comedian in the UK to come on and annihilate him for 20 minutes in a video and put it out on his own YouTube channel. And it's that, be rabbit thing, tell these people something that they don't already know about me. What joke are you going to make that Stephen tries? Like literally the most vicious, funny, sadonic UK roast person hasn't already said and it showed that he could laugh at himself.

1:36:34Dude, this is the take what they say, one up them, right? And so like, I'm going to take what they say, find a person who is professional at one uping them and then bring them in and then publish it to your million person YouTube channel. Yes. Like, we, so we actually teach this from a customer service. I know I'm going totally cross -pollot nation here, but we call it, there's, there can only be one person in the angry boat. And so customer comes in, they're shouting. And I learned this from one of my earliest business mentors. I worked at a fur coat dealer. So like brushing, you know, fur is a glorious job.

1:37:07I was 18 years of summer. And so this lady walks in, and I was at the retail shop, which normally I was in the warehouse where the peasants were. And so this lady comes in, and she's making a whole mess of noise. And the guy walks towards me, because the owner, and I see him roll his eyes, and then he turns the corner to go where she can see him. He like his face turns into a smile and then he's like, he's like Mrs. Robinson and then he just goes into rage mode and I was like, whoa, what's happening? And he was like, wait, there was a button missing on your jacket. He's like, give me that jacket.

1:37:37He like pulls that. He's like, who sold this to you? Who let you walk? He did anyone see you in this? And he was like, tell me their names right now. I'm gonna get that. They're gonna be out of here. Like we're gonna end like we're gonna get terminate their employment. We're gonna make sure that they never eat again. All the stuff, whatever. And she all of a sudden, she's like, oh no, no, no. No one saw me in it. I just saw it when I got home. If you guys could just, of course we're gonna fix it. Like no question, what's hard? And so of course, he takes the ticket, she leaves, he comes to the back and he just looked at me and he was like, only one person can be in the angry boat.

1:38:10And it was a lesson that has stuck with me in like, and so in this instance, everyone is angry at you. And so the only thing you, because people are contrained by nature, all you can do is be angry at them at whatever it is. And so like getting the comedian to like, oh, you think he insulted me? Like here's a picture of my cold, trivel dick after a nice cold, after my polar plunge. You want to see, like, it's just, it's like, can you do that? And it's just leaning into what feels unnatural and uncomfortable. But it's the only way to respond. You cannot wish for a strong character in an easy life.

1:38:44Each is the price of the other. What if what you're going through isn't hard? What if you're just sensitive?

1:38:54I think that most of us can look back on our lives to 10 years ago and think about the problems that we were dealing with then and think about how much of the pittance and how small those problems were compared to the problems that we deal with today, at least that's how I probably feel, maybe you feel the same way. And so I then think, okay, well, if I feel that way about the problems that I had 10 years ago, then 10 years from now, Alex will look back at the problems that I'm dealing with today and feel the same way. And so if he feels that way then about the problems that I have now, then the only difference is the perspective that he has that I don't have.

1:39:31And so I might just be a sensitive little pansy, and maybe these aren't problems at all. Maybe these are just facts of life, and I need to habituate to them. Because I remember my first lawsuit, right? Because it's like when you're in business long enough, you make enough money, you're just going to get sued. It is what it is. And I I was listening to Elon Musk talk about this. And at any given time, Tesla has hundreds of lawsuits. Like just they have massive departments of legal just for all the different things that are going on. And it was thinking that a requisite for success is a problem.

1:40:05Like you cannot become the wealthiest man in the world and not get sued. Like getting sued is an indicator that you're actually, is a requisite for being there. There's no person who's been there without this. And so reframing what I used to consider a problem as a point of evidence that I am on the path that I originally chose. I remember the first time that I ever tried to incline chest press 20 kilos. And as I got it up, this didn't a center for sporting excellence in Newcastle gym. And as I got it up there, I didn't have the triceps strength to be able to keep it. and I watched this thing slowly come down to one of the things.

1:40:46And it just landed on my nose. And I like sort of bailed it out off my nose. And now it's not even the warm up to the warm up set. So the problem is that we don't have very good memory. We don't have theory of mind for ourselves, for a previous version of ourselves. I've always thought that it would be such an amazing tour. Maybe Neuralink can do it at some point in future. You know how people want to go back in time, and they want to see a different place. I would love to go back in time in my own mind and remember the texture of my own existence and what were the things that I thought about, I've told this story before, but it's pretty illustrative.

1:41:24Day one is a journal that you can use for your phone. It's pretty good. And for me, it's big shit. It's like big things are happening. If I open day one, some fucking shit's going down.

1:41:37And break ups and illnesses and being worried about people dying know whatever the fuck. I once opened it to write down that the MC in room two, the R &B room of our Saturday night club night, had told me that he was leaving to go to a competitor event 15 miles away. And I remember thinking that it was so salient to me that it deserved to go in along with breakups and do I go in this reality TV show or do I not, because Because I was adamant that that would be the beginning of the end because the only reason the Asian sock, the Asian society came down was because they liked this particular MC and if he went then Asian sock would stop coming in.

1:42:16If Asian stopped coming then that would mean this and then the whole business would go and it would be dead. But I don't think that anymore. And there was one time where I hadn't worked our events for quite a while and a DJ that used to work for us came through and he thought that he'd wind me up by saying three minutes before we opened that something was up with one of the CDJs. Something's up with one of the CDJs a couple of minutes before you open. Things are bad because there's usually not a spare and it means that the night's going to be delayed or whatever and there was lots of people outside waiting to come in or whatever it might be.

1:42:49And he was expecting a response from a previous version of me, which would have been the one that would have gone into day one and typed about the fact that the CDJ hadn't worked. And I just said, oh, okay, well, I don't know. We'll fix it. And he called out, broke the fourth wall and said, oh, it's not broken at all. Like I just thought that I'd wind you up, but you didn't play the game. I'm like, oh, right. It's the like you've grown or you've changed thing. Yeah. He was a Duke. Don't punk the game. Yes. Don't punk the game. Yeah. I think the point is to always punk the game as many times as you possibly can, especially if you're the one getting the game played on you by yourself.

1:43:31What's your framework for quitting things and moving on to something new? How do you know when you're quitting because you're being a bitch? Yeah. And how do you know that you're moving on from something that's no longer worthwhile? Man, so there's a handful of questions that I think everyone faces that you never know the right answer to. And so it's like, how much is the right amount to invest versus consume is one of those answers? Like, if you invest, if you consume nothing and you invest everything into it tomorrow, You end up with a life where you enjoyed nothing and then you have a big pile of shit.

1:44:03The late gratification and the extreme results and no gratification. Right. And so, these are rather than either or as their continuums and to be managed more than problems to be solved. And so, I think just from a decision making framework, that's number one. Number two is so with regards to this one, which is, do you push or do you pivot, which is how I frame this question, pushing like, do I push through whatever this hardness is? and there's like something that's in sight that I think I can go to, or there are fundamental things that have changed that make my original hypothesis wrong. And so I'm telling the secret right now.

1:44:42But for me, I won't quit if no new information has come to light. And so if I I say, I'm going to do this based on these assumptions. If those assumptions have still held, then it's a push situation. If there's new data that's come to light that changes the nature of why I'm pushing or the outcome for what I'm going to get from pushing or the way that I'm pushing is incorrect, then I would quote, quote, quit. But quitting has a lot of heavy terminology in, you know, I'd say personal motivation masturbation. Pivot's much softer. Right. Because I think that everything is a pivot, except for you stopping.

1:45:27And so I think even reframe, like, language matters a lot, and I care a lot about language. And so, like, nothing is quitting unless you stop. And if you continue to pivot and you continue to push, either of those are activity. And so you will stumble upon something that does work in which case do more of it. And so that has always been my frame. But it's, I have an initial assumption or series of assumptions for a desired thing. So let's say I wanna build my social media brand. I say, okay, I believe that if I make content about things that no one else can make content about, that is more higher level business stuff than is out there because most of the YouTubers or YouTubers are not business people, there will be an audience for that.

1:46:04And in the beginning, I will have fewer people who follow it, but if I make really good stuff, over time, eventually people will tell people and I will get better at making content and that will grow. So if I'm at year two and the thing is, is like, do I have leading indicators? And so even in business stuff, we like, I don't need the outcome, but are there leading indicators that are telling me that this, I'm on the right path? And so identifying ahead of time, just like we have a problem that we identify, like okay, if we succeed, like people are gonna rationalize you in the street, you're not gonna be able to go out as much, but like all these are problems that I'm gonna have to do with, cool, I'm willing to pay for those.

1:46:38But what are the things along the way that will tell me that even though I haven't achieved Mr. Beastum, that I'm on the right path? And so I think having those little indicators to keep taking steps towards the ultimate thing and continue to push, I mean, I have a different tweet which is that the world belongs to those who can continue to work without seeing the result of their work. Continue to do without seeing the result of their doing. And it's really the person who can do that for the longest period of time. And that's usually because they're still getting leading indicators. It's just that it's amounting to a much bigger mountain.

1:47:10And so like if you want to do big shit, it takes a way longer period of time because the easy shit, the little hills, everyone conquer is really quickly. I'm on time. I say, please, and thank you. It's like so fucking what? And so like, if you want to do something that most people can't do, literally just extend the time horizon on the things that most people can't weather. Like, there's so much opportunity on the other side of being willing to persist for an extended period of time on the correct path without getting positive reinforcement from your environment. And the longer you can stick with something without that positive feedback loop in terms of the big external thing, the easier do you have the opportunities are because so few people can pursue them?

1:47:47In James Cleza, Tommy Cabitz, I think he interviews maybe the Chinese weightlifting teams head coach and he asked what is the difference between the absolute elite world champions and the ones that simply qualify. And the coach said the absolute elite are the ones who can continue to come in every single day without getting bored. That was it. And Matt Fraser talks about it as well where he says that Doing an hour and a half of monostructural work on the rower. You've got to do zone two Hey, guess what? You don't even get the benefit of feeling like you work that hard. Yeah, you just get to kind of yeah Whatever like 24 strokes a minute or something like slow zone two whatever the whatever the thing is But no one's fired up for that.

1:48:37He said people make a mistake in believing that I'm fired up to go and do that session I'm not fired up to go and do that session. I just go and do that session. We've been saying, so there's a lot of people say, like, do the work. And in Jim Launch and it's continued into our stuff today, but do the boring work is what we call it. And boring is what make you rich. Boring, the boring activities, it's the double checking the emails. It's writing their follow -up sequence that you really don't feel like writing. And honestly, just getting it done will make you significantly more money than not getting it done.

1:49:09And so it's like, it's, it's, it's falling with a lead from a month ago and just being like, hey, by the way, you're still interested in that thing. It's the stuff that you don't want to do. Like, no one's like, I can't wait to fall up with these leads that haven't responded to the last two text messages I sent. But if you respond, if you follow up to everybody, you will make more sales than you go. It's presuming that it's an effective strategy because there are ways that you can continue to chug away and do a thing with no positive reinforcement. But hey, guess what? that's the direction that you're supposed to be going in and you're walking over that.

1:49:39Yeah. That's a push and pivot, right? Like if, if, if known response, then I would say I have zero leading indicators, but if you have enough response rates, then it, then it's worth the, the toil. Um, but I, I, so, I mean, Michael Phelps talks about this too with, uh, with swimming, like, just laps after laps after, like, he doesn't even have the variety of like different moves or different, like it's just laps, just sheer volume of work. And I call the rocky cutscene and almost every successful person that I have ever encountered has gone through not a month or a year, but many years of doing work without reward where they have to do things that other people find boring and they have to sacrifice things that everyone finds interesting that most people want to do during that entire season of their life.

1:50:31And they basically sacrifice a season of other things that they would prefer to do to do stuff that they would not prefer to do because of the one thing they want most. And that's the rocky cutscene. And instead of lasting five minutes, it just the usually last five or ten years. You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to -do list. you'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for years. This is what hard feels like and that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard and the more worth doing it is, the harder it is, the greater the payoff, the greater the hardship.

1:51:12If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you. I think a lot of entrepreneurship and even personal growth is training yourself on how you respond to hard. Because in the early days, hard was, ooh, stop. This isn't good. I should I should this is a warning sign. This is red flag. I should slow down or I should stop. You know, I should pivot. But the more I think about it as a competitive landscape as I'm clear on what this path is supposed to look like. And these rocks and these dragons are things that I'm going to have to slay along the way to get the princess or get the treasure.

1:51:50I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow. It's a selection effect. And I think if you can shift from this is hard to no one else will be able to do this, then it flips from being this thing that you're like, oh, pour me to, oh, pour everyone else who's going to have to fucking try. And I think that is so much more motivating as a frame for the exact same circumstance. Yeah, that's awesome. And I was thinking a lot about the lonely chapter that we talked about last time. That was the best, most powerful idea I think that we came up with. And if you see there basically being no shortcuts toward getting the thing that you want, there are ways to be more and less efficient.

1:52:36There are ways to do things with more and less of a positive disposition, which can actually make the journey feel a lot easier. But ultimately if you assume that largely everyone needs to go through the same challenges that you're going through Every single difficult thing that you do is kind of like a massive wall that you need to get over and you go Wow fuck. I'm so glad that I've got over that wall and Think about how many people are going to be selected out. It's like the Hunger Games, you know Think about how many other people are going to fall that wall there? People only root for people who don't need it Like the amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with.

1:53:29That's when you want people to root for you. That's when you want people to support you. Once you've already won people are like he's amazing, he's so good but like that's the time when you need it the least. And so you always have to be the person who roots for you before I've always does. And it's usually a single clap in auditorium for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you. And that visual I think is one that you can kind of take because it is people struggle to do things alone. And the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people.

1:54:18And rather than fighting that or bemoaning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path. Because if everyone else were cheering you on, then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you want to be. It's an interesting paradox that the energy requires to start doing something is way more than the energy required to continue doing the thing. And that the beginning of doing anything results in the lowest amount of reward for internal and external than when you've been doing it for ages. So I think about this a lot with the show that there was this stat that Spotify told us, 85 % of the listeners of this show found us in 2023.

1:55:07And I thought at the end of 2022, remembering at that point, I'd been on Rogan, we were at 650K, we've got, you know, we've been doing 556, 600 episodes deep. Like, I've got it, I've done the thing. Like this is me doing, if this isn't fucking doing the thing, I've moved to Austin, Texas, I've got an O1 visa, I've got like the all the rest of the stuff. John Peterson's been on twice, you've been on. and yet, everything up until that point is two months of growth. Yeah, we made more money, just from a revenue perspective, we made more money and more subs in one month, December of last year than we did in the entire first three and a half years of the show.

1:55:51So it's this odd paradox and one of the things that you need to ensure, I've had this idea about protect your passion at all costs because if you begin to hate the thing that you do, you negatively change your trajectory and that means that at the time when you can benefit the most by every single unit of work, which is the later that you go presuming that you continue to hit that over trajectory, if you've completely killed any passion or desire to do the work in the early stages because you've not protected it appropriately. That can be by focusing on the wrong things, by not rewarding yourself, by not building it with people that care about you, by just not celebrating when you hit milestones.

1:56:31All of the things that actually help to keep you going. Doing a character. By the time you get to the stage where each unit of effort allows you to gain a thousand or a million of each of the things that it would have done at the very beginning, you've inverted the like the passion equation takes way more energy to start a thing than to continue doing a thing and yet in the beginning the rewards are way lower than they are at the end but if you don't protect your passion your motivation is that it's lowest when you are at your highest amount of efficiency in terms of returning your time put it.

1:57:04I think a hopeful message that anyone can think about who's in that hard period or in that start period is that it won't get harder. Like this is the hardest part. And so if you can just make it through this, everything else is downhill. It's not that the things that you're, the dragons are going to slam are going to get bigger. They are. But you become so much more equipped to slay them back. And you have so many more allies. You have people in the stands cheering for you. You have the audience. You have all of these other things that are behind you. But at the beginning, it's just you with a stick against a bear.

1:57:40And arguably that fight is a harder fight to win than beating a dragon when you have a nuclear bomb and six nations behind you. And so it's not even like the the size of the hardship. It's just also the resources and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning is literally burning the one thing you have which is time because you have no leverage. You don't have the money to pay other people to help you. You don't have the resources to go like get someone to to no one can learn it for you. It's like there's a lot of the things that that we care about a lot like no one can work out for you.

1:58:12Doesn't matter how much money you have, no one can learn skills for you. And so in the early days, like, it feels so painful because you're like, you look around to see who can help you and then you're like, fuck, it's me again. And I think getting comfortable with the idea that each of these things kind of like slum dog millionaire, if you've seen that movie where he, I'll give you the TLDR, he goes through his entire life of randomness and he gets on who wants to be a millionaire version in India and has 12 questions to make million dollars. And from only 12 random experiences in his life that seemed meaningless at the time, was able to answer all of the questions and then ultimately win.

1:58:47The skills that you develop along the way, like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy, that then became Apple Fonds, that transformed how we type. Those early days, that little trench, winning in the weeds, oftentimes gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more context than anyone else. And so rather than lament them, and hate the fact that you're going through it, remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver, that you're gonna be using to slay the future bigger dragons. And so,

1:59:19expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is. I've always loved earning my stripes with the things that I've done, whether it was with nightlife or running the podcast or doing whatever. And I think, Does I get degree of nobility to it? But functionally that's kind of, that's just like it's a nothing. Like, what is the, what is the nobility? But I think the reason that you can feel noble about it and the reason that it gives you positive reward is you know that you understand every single inch of the things and that if you want to hold a conversation, we went out for dinner with our new CFO and accounts people on Saturday and they said, you ask a lot of questions.

2:00:06Most people don't ask very many questions. And I also don't care at all about accounts really. Like I'm not doing this for the money, but they said you ask a lot of questions. Is that well, I don't ever really want to walk into a room and not be able to hold my own, at least just competently, if it's to do with something that I care about. And the same thing goes for this. Like I understood I started to learn about focal lengths and frame rates and negative film reverse contrast lighting. And then sure enough, two years after we started doing it, a bunch of different, I sent you the Instagram thing.

2:00:40Like this really awesome film Instagram that I've been following for ages, picked us up for what we were doing and gave us props, independent of the talky thing, which is fundamentally what we're here for. And we created this entire new industry of like cinematic podcasting, which was recognized by, as far as I'm aware, like the best cinematic, it's called film light, at film light, to people who can go and see it on Instagram. Like the best decoder and analyzer of cinematography. And two years ago when we started, I remember thinking, fuck, like I love the way that they've broken down what happens in Ad Astra.

2:01:16Oh my God, the whole thing was shot on 35 million. Each different scene's got two pairings of colors and stuff like that. And then, but the reason that we were able to get there, at least in some part, is I can have a conversation with people. So, each of the things that you do when you not only win in the weeds but live in the weeds, then allows you downstream from that to see the things that other people aren't seeing. There's a quote that I love from Dr. Cash, I'll probably butcher it, but experts have more ways to win than beginners do. And so, if an expert goes into any setting that they're expert in, they have so many faster feedback loops that reward them in the moment before the ultimate outcome.

2:01:58So if you're a master video editor, there's so many things that you can do that while editing, you make one change and then it looks right, you have a positive feedback loop. And so I think when you're on the start path, you can't look at the outcome as the only positive because you will never make it. And so the positive frame that I've always used is, sure, you can have the external ones of like, I like thinking about my first videos had like 13 views. And I'm like, well, if I had an audience of 13 people, I used to spend years pitching, you know, weight loss stuff to rims of 13. And that was fine.

2:02:27And so thinking about that way was helpful. But the most helpful frame was thinking about who I was becoming as the asset that I was building. So in real time, whenever I finished a long day's work, I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for five years without reward. And that would be part of the story I would someday tell. And so some of the biggest reinforces I've had in my life has been future casting the story that I would tell about the shitty period that I was in. Like I remember when I was sleeping on the floor at my gym because I didn't have enough money for two rents.

2:03:01And I was like, I will fucking tell this story. And when I lost everything for the first time, I like, I have the screenshot of the bank account. Like when I show up, people are like, oh, look, there's that thing, but they forget that there was a person who screenshot it to be like, like this won't fucking happen again. And I think having a larger narrative of where you're ultimately going, one, gives you the vision of where you're like, the, like, knows where he's going. But it allows the dragons that you have to slay along the way, the hard things that you have to overcome to feed into the larger narrative of the story that you'll someday tell.

2:03:37And so like, no one ever tells stories about the hero who made it all happen immediately and had no hardships, no one cares. But I like, okay, you were born to a billionaire. Is there a story there? Not really. But everyone loves the story because we can see ourselves in the character and how much we hope to be like them. And it's the being like them, not the having what they have that we usually like. And so reframing ourselves as the hero of that narrative in my harder times was what really got me through that and thinking, I will tell the story of some day. Have you heard Rogan talk about the Be the Hero of your own story thing?

2:04:14Mm -hmm. Oh, dude. This is old now. I think this is maybe, maybe even 10 years old. Maybe 10 years old. And he's in one of his old, he's in the LA podcast studio. And he says, imagine that you're in a movie. And imagine the movie begins now. And you're the hero of the movie. Yeah. What would that guy do? Yeah. What would that guy do right now? Yeah. Because you are. I just got into business. So actually, I just made the investment in school and I was talking to Sam the founder and I said, what? Sam. What's Sim? Sim. That's why he sizes up. Yeah. And I was talking to him and I said, I want to give you the single easiest razor to predict my behavior.

2:05:04And I said, whatever will be the most epic story is the thing that I will most likely do. And so oftentimes the most epic story is not the shortest outcome to victory. It's the long saga that results in this big thing later eventually. And I was like if you ever want to know if you're like I'm not sure what he's going to do in the situation, just wonder what the most epic story to tell would be and that's usually what I will do. And I don't know if that's That's genuinely my razor for even making the big decisions about, okay, I'm going to sell gym launch. I'm going to marry Laila. I'm going to slum it and live at the gym.

2:05:48I'm going to fly around and do turnarounds. I'm going to start this whole idea of a media company that just gives exclusively. I feel like how do I put all these together? It's like, well, what would be the most epic story? And I thought of this idea of just like when I think about who that story I want to tell is this billionaire that documented the entire thing the whole way and just gave. Because I always thought I was like I wish that Elon Musk and Warren Buffett and all these guys would have like in Jeff Bezos. Like would have just like I would love to have seen 1997 Amazon content. And a lot of the content in terms of like it's getting five views.

2:06:25It's like it's okay because when we make it they're gonna come back and watch this. So I don't need him to watch it today. I want them to know that it's here when I do. And I think that got me out of the loop of it. I have to win right now. And then every one of them is just dropping a kernel or a breadcrum for future meats refer back to. Until you win, effort always goes and noticed. Get used to it. No one routes for you until everyone routes for you. That's just how it works. Yeah. Yeah. People only root for those who don't need to be rooted for it.

2:07:09It's strange to think about how mimetic and fallible everyone, me and you, everybody that's listening to this is, Does stuff that I've said on this podcast for like six years since the first time that I ever said it seven years? And it's only been within the last 18 months that it's gone viral. It's the same sentence. The exact same sentence, said into the same microphone, slightly nicer lighting. And in some ways it's reassuring because you go, I fucking knew that was right. And knew that thing that I was saying was right and I kept saying it until people realized that it was right another part of it is The medium matters more than the message in many ways the frame matters more than the picture I would say that the medium the medium and the message are inextricably linked like if Elon Musk tweets I'm taking a shit.

2:08:08It will get a zillion shares Because he's the richest man on earth and has done more entrepreneurial endeavors that have pushed humanity I think more than anyone else at this point. And so like, you can't separate the message from the messenger. And I remember when I was in middle school, I learned this lesson where I was in Spanish class. And there was, you know, there was the class clown or whatever. And I was like, I want people to laugh at my jokes. And so I made a joke that was a joke that that guy probably would have made. And it was a self -deprecating joke. But the thing is, is that like, that guy was kind of a bum.

2:08:43and like him making self -deprecating jokes made sense because of the context of who he was. But I was a straight A student who was really good at sports and no one thought it was funny. And fast forward, you know, 10 years, there was a joke that had an art fraternity which is there's nothing funny about an in -shape body. And so like the, I agree with you and that the medium of the message matters. And so people won't root for you because we use the delivery mechanism, usually as a filter for whether we should even trust the source. And so I tell the story of the teacher who's talking about dollar cost averaging into the S &P and giving investing advice.

2:09:27Like they might be like, man, like I give better investing advice than Warren Buffett does. Like he's saying the same thing as me. It's like, and you know what? You're probably right. The only problem is you didn't build Berkshire Hathaway and so no one gives a shit. And so the thing is is that we use someone's evidence and authority as a filter for how little we need to process the information Because if you're listening to a teacher you have to then think okay Can I separate the message from the person can I independently analyze this and say is it good is it bad? If Warren Buffett says you should buy this you don't need to analyze you figure he knows more than me He is more perspective and I will just take it as fact and so it's actually lazy consumption on behalf of everyone else that gives There's authority, so much resonance and so much shareability because they're also protected because if you share something Elon says, you're protected by Elon and his brand.

2:10:15And so the hard work is getting to the point where you have the evidence that people are willing to feel safe agreeing with you. And the only way for them to feel safe agreeing with you is for you to disagree with them for a very long period of time until you prove that you're right. Roy Sutherland's got an idea where he says no one gets fired for hiring KPMG. Yeah. such a good line. And it's true, people would sooner fail by following a blueprint that's been done before than risk succeeding by trying something new. Because if you try the new thing, any failure is on your shoulders. If you follow the blueprint, even if it's been total dog shit the last 10 times that you tried it, but we followed the blueprint.

2:10:56You know, we did the thing that was the same before, Michael Males, like personal, literal professional International, Internet troll told me when we were one of the first times that we met, I wouldn't be able to say one tenth of the shit that I can if I was taller than five foot seven. He's like a small guy, but he can get away with being kind of like the low key of politics on Twitter because if he's, you know, six foot five and built like Alan Ritchie, it's going to seem like he's bullying. Yeah, but it's there's something funny about him like Hey, baby like you know dip dip dip in a way There's also something like until you win effort always goes and noticed I realized this with and it made me like a little disperited how fallible People are around success.

2:11:49So do you remember Billy McFarlane's guy that did fire festival that festival at Pablo Esquibaz Island and then everyone got stranded and nearly died. If he'd been able to pull off an even remotely passable event, people would have hailed him as a marketing genius. Regardless of the fact that he was continually flying back to New York to raise money in an ethical way for a project that he didn't know if it was going to work and all the rest of the stuff. So literally the line between And Charlotton Grefter, who's out of his depth and visionary pioneer who makes things work when no one else believes that they can is just outcome.

2:12:30Everyone thinks you're crazy until it works.

2:12:34And so I mean, if you think of the outcome as the trump card, then all of the pain and suffering that you lead up to that point, if you're just, I try to think of an appropriate saying, I was going to say, balls deep certain that no matter what you will die or you will get there, then the likelihood that all of the things that you've done up to that point will then be justified in retrospect is super high. And I actually see that as super compelling as a thing to latch onto in harder times. Yes, but the end justifying the means is a slippery slope. I'm a mocky -evalent guy, so.

2:13:21Have you seen, speaking of that, and you mentioned Robert Green earlier on, you should buy the 25th anniversary edition of 48 Lows of Power, which came out last year. Let the bound, golden boss. Oh, you got it and you've seen the thing on the edges. Yeah, this face is very cool. The best. The Superbow printing. Dude, so for the people that don't know, you remember you would get those things in packets of sea really when you were a kid and you could sort of move a little bit of plastic from left to right and it would look like a football player was running on something like that. It's basically the same but on the edge of a book.

2:13:51If it's flat, it's just gold foil. If you open it one way so that the pages display out, it's Robert Green's face and if you open it so the page is split out and the other way it's Machiave Alley's face. The fucking coolest book, just, and I've seen a lot of influencer gifting of books, it's a big deal at the moment, you know, we send the book out and maybe they'll post about it and it'll help with sales or whatever. And there's some very elaborate ways, I'm sure that you've received some of these, because I know that you're on the same mailing list as I am. There's some of these that are super, super elaborate, and I remember being like, that was like, I don't know, like cool or whatever, but that Robert Green book as soon as I saw that it did that.

2:14:31And I'm sending a fucking video of this to anyone that I can. This is like magic. So yeah, what is it? You're doing sales because you sucked at marketing, you're doing marketing because you sucked at product. That's a great novelism. Yeah, it's so funny because like with the book, I didn't do any of that. I just always, I wanted people, I want people to read the book. Because like, Like if someone posts about the book before the book's out, then like, I wanted no one to have read the book until the day it was out. But yeah, the longer I've been in at least the business game and we were talking about legendary foods, it's just product.

2:15:08Like I had a roommate way back in the day who's now a really successful entrepreneur and we were both like early days, poor shit. We happened to live together and he read this book. He just told me the title and just like stuck with me. He said, too good to fail. And I just love that as a frame. It's like, if I open a sandwich shop, how can I make the sandwiches too good? Like, just if someone takes a bite, they're like, fuck. This is the best sandwich I've ever had. Like, if you just get that, then the rest of it doesn't matter. And so when you're like, I mean, I think about this in business decisions, but probably also in life decisions, I think Tim Ferriss talks about this, the one big domino.

2:15:45It's like, what is the one thing that if I just get this one thing right, everything else shrinks into a relevance. And I think about that from like the hero story what you said with Joe Rogan which I love that frame it's like okay boom now you're present in your movie what would that guy do? It's like well what one big thing could that guy accomplish that would make all of the all of the mediocrity of your life up to this point a relevant and why are you not putting every single ounce of your effort to prove that one point so that you You could then justify everything up to that point. So it wouldn't have been mediocrity.

2:16:21It would have been the path together. Exactly. It would have been the journey. People want to find that passion, but you don't find it. You create it. And you create it by getting good at something. And to get good at stuff, you start by doing something you suck at. Then you get good. Then you like it. Then people ask how you found your passion. Answer. by starting when you sucked and not giving up.

2:16:47Yeah, I hate the passion mantra, I really do. I mean, part of it was because I'll even play it out. So I read all the same self -help books early on when I was in my watch entrepreneurial days and I was trying to find my passion and I was into fitness. And so I was deciding between fitness, test prep because I was good at test prep and frozen yogurt because I like dessert. Right, so I've like, these are my three quote passions, which let's just translate that into things you're interested in. And so as soon as I started the gym, my passion disappeared. It became work. And I had a different mentor later in my life who said never create work around your passion because then it'll become work.

2:17:25And he was a guy who was a very successful business guy. And I think about that actually more than I share because it's just complete and utter bullshit it because it assumes that what you're going to be doing every day is the thing that you're currently really interested, which also doesn't make you money. And so your behavior has to change. And whenever you're doing these new things, one, they'll be new, which means you will suck at them, which means you'll probably not like them. But it's also part of it. And so like I would prefer to take the extreme opposite position of everything will suck.

2:17:58And eventually you will get good at the things that you suck at. and then you'll enjoy being competent at that thing, which will then probably give you status, and you'll enjoy the fruits of status more than the pain of doing the thing, and instead of doing creative positive feedback loop that you'll actually keep sticking with it. And so I'd rather set the expectation that everything is terrible all the time forever. Now let's see if we can make our... now let's see if we can become the person who can still do it anyways, and start that as the baseline rather than trying to assume that I need perfect conditions in order to start because, I mean, starting is the perfect condition.

2:18:36Like, whatever condition that you're in that you start was the perfect condition. There is such a thing as intrinsic motivation, though, as well as extrinsic. You can do something that there's a whole myriad of things that you could be potentially good at. And many of them could give you renown and money and social cloud and that feedback loop. But there are some that you will enjoy doing for the sake of doing them more. I don't disagree. I was, remember a note that I wrote to myself when I first started the podcast, I'm only decided to turn pro with it, which is one way to turn something you love into a laborer to monetize it.

2:19:11Okay. Because as soon as you decide that you're going to really, really go for this, if you want to turn pro at something, I use this example in my live show of a pickle ball player. So this guy loves playing pickle ball and he gets to turn up on a Saturday and play with his friends And so, you know, if it's cold outside, you doesn't need to go and play. And if he's tired, he doesn't need to go and play. And if he's hungry, he doesn't need to go and play. And then he decides to turn pro. And he thinks, I'm turning pro at this thing that I love, I can't wait to make what I love into my career. But he doesn't realize that, hey, guess what?

2:19:43If you're hungry, you still need to go and train. Well, actually, no, you don't get to be hungry anymore because the guy that isn't hungry is the guy that's training better. So you now need to stop going out with your friends and you need to train when it's cold. And you need to work on game tape and mindset and hydration and nutrition. You need to do S &C and you need to have a physio and you need to not see your family as much. All of these things came along for the ride, it seemed you decided to turn pro. Is that a price that you're prepared to pay? And that's an interesting question to ask yourself.

2:20:10Am I prepared to sacrifice my pure, unencumbered, unmoleasted love for this thing in order to try and become the best at this thing? I think it's really tough and I'm going to shoot my own advice right now in the head. or at least my positioning right now, which is that it's very easy for someone in my position or in your position to say this is kind of what it takes. And or rather, this is like you should find your passion because like, transparently what I do now every day, I actually really do love. I live more or less the same day, seven days a week and like I'll tell you what it is just so we can have context, but I wake up and then I go to my office here and I work for six hours writing my next book, and then I take two hours 'ish of calls typically.

2:21:04And then after that, I lift in the gym that I custom designed with all the pieces that I love, and then I go and eat with my wife, and then I go to my condo, and I sit in my recliner that overlooks the entire city, and I read, and then I go to bed, and I do that every day. And I love every aspect of the day, with the exception of maybe the two hours of calls that I have to take. But I see those as a necessary thing for everything else that I have there. Now could I stop doing that maybe? But for me to say that that's what your day needs to look like in order to get into the top floor with the view that looks over these things and so that you can not make money for two years while you write a book that eventually makes money or whatever is not true.

2:21:51And so So it's the difference between like, oh, I should fly private because that's what rich people do. I should play basketball because I want to be tall and modeling the top, the behavior at the top of the mountain rather than the climb. And so they're completely different. And so this whole idea, unfortunately, and I don't blame the people who do this is they see their current life like I would see mine and say, well, what do I do now? I do everything that I love. Okay. But I didn't get here doing everything that I love. I did a fuckload of shit. I hate and I did it for a very long period of time and I did not have anyone to root me on and in fact I had many people who were actively trying to destroy my path and tell me why I was a terrible idea.

2:22:32I had this idea about why you should stop taking advice from successful people because most of their advice is not about what they did when they were at your stage. It's about what they do now and it's the same thing around pushing work -life balance. You know, what I've found after 50 years at Disney is that really the most important thing is what all right. Well, how did you get to this stage? What did you do when you were two years in? Because that's where I am. What did you do when you were broken living on the gym floor? Because that's where I am. Don't tell me about the complicated routine or the balance or the flying private, the bar stills upside down and you're mixing up the ends for the means.

2:23:17everything on my right up. So this is, I mean, I remember in a lot of excruciating detail what it took me to get here. But I will say that I had a ruthless focus on dollars per hour. And so I'm just giving tactical advice right now. But everything that I could trade away for more time doing the thing that made me money was what I did. And so I remember the first time I made a $500 sale and it took me 30 minutes. And I was like every hour of every day, this is what I'm going to do. And anything that is not talking to someone in exchange for them giving me a credit card so that I can charge it and make $500.

2:24:04Anything that makes me less than $250 per hour or per 30 minutes, I'm giving to somebody else. And so after that first sale, I was like, I'm never cooking again. I'm never going grocery shopping again. I'm not cleaning again because I knew that in one sale, I could pay for that person for the month. And so like the ruthless focus on what can I do that creates an input to output being money equation. And me, at least for me, it was pouring everything I possibly could into the input and eliminating everything else. I made this video on Facebook before I was quote Alex Ramozy years ago when I still had six gyms before I even did the turn arounds.

2:24:42And I made this video almost as documentation, but I said, so I want to open up my seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth location, and I have the spots picked out. And I'm already working all of the hours that I'm awake and I've already given up Saturdays. So the only thing that I have left is like Sundays and evenings. things. And so I am no longer going to be watching any football and I'm no longer going to have Netflix at all. And that is what I'm giving up for seven, eight, nine, and 10. And I remember just making this video of like, that's what I'm sacrificing. And I think a lot of people create these to -do lists when in my experience, it's been so much more useful to write down all the things that I'm willing to sacrifice.

2:25:31Because if you sacrifice everything, There's nothing left than to do the one thing that matters. And I think Jerry Seinfeld talks about this from a writing perspective. He says that every day no matter what, he sits down and he writes for two hours. Now, he doesn't have to write, but he's not a lot of do anything else. And so he can sit there, but there's nothing else to do except for write jokes. And so I think a lot about that from the climb perspective, which is like most of everyone who's listen to this who isn't achieving what they want is fucked with their time. They think that they're spending all their time working, but your output, like you don't even know how to work.

2:26:06I mean, really real with you. Like you think you know how to work. You don't know how to work. Like the amount of output, like, and I'll measure this by like, what is your output? It's probably not as high as you think. And so rather than trying to learn all these productivity hacks, the ultimate productivity hack is no. No. And oh, as you stop doing shit. And then when you create space, then you can fill it with a thing that matters, but trying to add on more to your schedule of all the things that you're not willing to sacrifice is the very reason that you're not doing what you need to do. A lot of people would look at that life of, I'm going to sacrifice evenings and I'm not going to watch football anymore and say, well, what's the point?

2:26:46If you make yourself miserable on route to achieving the goal, if most of your life is journey, not destination, and it makes you miserable on root to it. Why do that? So that was the thing I was mentioning earlier where it's like, let's take the absolute extreme of it's going to suck and it's going to last forever. How can I be okay in that circumstance? And I do have the fundamental belief that circumstances nothing to do with how what you're subjective all being is. And so if monks can be super chill in wherever monks do monk things, and have nothing and have higher subjective well -being ratings than anyone else here in the Western world.

2:27:27It clearly isn't external. And so then, if I'm going to be just as miserable, being mediocre as I am doing this shit that's going to amount to something, then I might as well do the shit that's going to amount to something and be miserable there and at least have something in the show for it. Does this story I learned about Victor Hugo, famous writer from history? Do you know this about what you did with this seventh? So Victor Hugo needed to make himself right. So he paid his servant each night during the middle of the night to come into his bedroom and remove the bedclothes from him, turn the heating off, and then lock his bedroom door from the outside.

2:28:07And he wasn't allowed to leave until Victor slid six pages of handwritten work underneath. So, you know, you look at Opal, which is this app for iPhone, which stops you from using apps or frozen turkey, cold turkey, which is the same thing for desktop. And that's just the digital equivalent of Victor Hugo being locked in his bedroom with no bedding and just a quill and a few pieces of paper and then having a slide underneath the door. And I want to push back on something that you said right before Victor Hugo, which is, you know, somebody somebody might ask like, why would you do all this stuff if you're not happy?

2:28:45That assumes that my goal in life is to be happy. What is your goal in life? To do epic shit. Genuinely, to be useful. And so why place do epic shit over be happy? Because when I look back on my life and retrospect, the things that bring me the most joy in the moment are the things that I was willing to sacrifice for for an extended period of time. and those pay memory dividends far greater than the momentary cost that I had at the moment. And so I think it's a long -term, short -term thing, but a frame that continued to paralyze me for a long period of time was an obsession with happiness. Like it was truly an obsession.

2:29:29It was an obsession of mine in college. I almost got into positive psychology because I thought that was really interesting and that's what I, that's what I hate my passion, right? I consumed all all that stuff and I drove myself mad with it and I actually was more sad and depressed than anything, which is probably why I was trying to find all this positive, uh, hippie hippie stuff. And I just cracked one day and I was like, fuck happiness because it felt so out of reach that I was like, just fuck it. I'm just, I'm not even, I'm not even a shoot for it. I'm just gonna do stuff and that's all I'm gonna do.

2:30:04I'm just going to do stuff. And what happened was like a few years later, a few days later. I looked up and I was like, huh, I'm not miserable. And so I actually identified for a very long period of time as, I'm not a happy person, comma, and that's okay. I'm fine with that. I accept that. And there was this huge conflict for such a long period of time where I was like, like you're supposed to be happy. Why aren't you happier? Like, there's something wrong. There's something wrong with you. Something needs to change rather than saying like, maybe the level of happy that you are is fine. Who am I, like what happy am I comparing myself to?

2:30:50And also, if wherever your current state is, if you just say like happy, err, which is really when people are like, I wanna be happy, they're just saying I wanna be happy, err, than I am. Which means that you create this distance between where you are and where you wanna be, which is the recipe for being unhappy, is saying that I wanna be happy, err. So it doesn't matter how happy you are, you wanna be happy, err. And so by relinquishing the desire to be happy, I ended up enjoying a lot more of the stuff that I was doing because I didn't make it a requisite for my activities. So then it became a pleasant surprise.

2:31:20I was like, oh, this doesn't suck. Huh, how nice. Two famous psychologists, Daniel Gilbert and Daniel Kahneman have quite divergent views on happiness. It's quite interesting. So Daniel Gilbert talks about how if you spent every minute of the rest of your life on a floaty, lilo, inner pool, drinking cocktails, in retrospect, you might not have found much meaning, but each individual moment of experience would have been enjoyable. And he believes that constitutes to him a life that is well lived. I disagree with this guy entirely Daniel Kahneman and this is my position too which is a well -lived life is one which in retrospect you are glad that you lived right so one is leaning towards hedonic pleasure and the other is leaning toward meaning so one you could say is happiness and the other is meaning it's my belief that your disposition largely influences where on that spectrum from Lilo to do hard things, you need to sit.

2:32:26And you will have friends and I did for a very long time in the nightlife industry have friends that just seem to be so fucking happy not doing stuff. Like just they would float through life and they wouldn't ask themselves, am I actualizing my fucking virtue? Is this the highest integrity that I can do with these things and all the rest of it? And I was envious of those people. You've never seen a dog, you see a dog on the floor and it's just lying there and you think, oh my god, if only I could be that, like it just wants to go for walk and have food and like go pee pee. That's it. That's all it wants to do.

2:32:57And you think, fuck, it would be great to be that dog. But like, guess what? If your constitution doesn't allow you to be that dog, the only way out is through. This was something, the first time that I went to go and see Peterson, someone asked him a question and they said, the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel everything so deeply? And he thought for a little bit, and he said, take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you. The only way out is through. And it's kind of like as soon as you realize that there are things that you do that give you satisfaction, and there are things that other people do that give them happiness, and you've tried that root.

2:33:40The only way is to continue doing the thing that you know that works. And I think that you were an example of someone who was optimizing heavily for meaning rather than for hedonism. And that's not to say that there are people. And this is, I said this on the last episode, the fundamental thing that people don't understand as far as I can tell about your worldview is that the thing that you do for work and the thing that you do for fun are the same thing. They can't imagine that because that's not the way that it is for them. and it's not maybe the way it is for most people. But if you're the sort of person that finds meaning more enjoyable than happiness, you need to optimize for the thing that you enjoy the most.

2:34:27And I'll toss in, meaning lasts longer. And so I'll be super upfront. If that, those friends of yours in the night life, there's nothing wrong with that. In my way, like as I see the world, like if that's you and you're like, I fucking love everything I do, then like you want, like just keep doing that, you know what I mean? But I think a lot of the message that Chris and I are saying here is that if you've tried that path and it hasn't worked for you, Then you have this dark door that's in the corner that you've been trying all the other ones that have nice gold edges and really shiny things, but there's that door that you keep looking at.

2:35:11And it's the other side of you that's clearing us throughout in the other room. It's like you just have to bust through the door. And I think that the like giving yourself permission to be unhappy, or at least for me, giving myself permission to be unhappy for an extended period of time in order to get what I wanted gave me so much relief from honestly I don't like using the word nowadays because it has so many associations but just from like the depression or the funk that I was in for a few years. Yeah I just I just didn't like my life and I had achieved by most measures because I did I don't have the I you know school failed me I was a whatever like I wasn't that I finished in three years and I did really well in school and I had a really good job but it was empty for me And so my goal is things you talked about earlier, but my personal goal is to squeeze every ounce of potential out of whatever I have.

2:36:10And I think that if you feel like you have potential left over, then it will eat you alive until you do something about it. Not to piss off the positive parties in the room, but if you haven't gotten what you want, then you're not worthy of it, period. and that's okay. Now you can admit that you suck and improve. Better to know you're bad for a season than pretend you're good for a lifetime. You're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are. You're not struggling from imposter syndrome, you're a student and pretending to be a teacher. No students say they feel like frauds for trying to learn.

2:36:47You're a fraud when you get up to teach the class and you've never done it.

2:36:54Deep.

2:36:59I think it's just giving yourself permission to suck. It's giving yourself permission to be unhappy. It's giving yourself permission to not achieve while you do for a long period of time. It's giving yourself permission to lose friends. It's giving yourself permission to do things that's different than people in your social circle or your age group are doing, it's giving you permission, giving yourself permission to be an exception so that you can become exceptional. And a lot of that, the whole positive poly mantra of like that, I saw that, I saw a post of girl made and she was like, you are worthy.

2:37:36And that's what made that tweet. All my tweets are just responses to shit I say. And so this girl was like, you like, I say this in myself in the morning like, you are worthy, you are amazing, you are goddess. And I was like, you're not a goddess because you don't control me. And you don't have the things that you want. You keep thinking that you're saying that you're worthy is going to somehow make it true. But like the way that you know you're worthy is that you have it. That's it. Like that is the limit test. Are you worthy of a billion dollars? Well, are you a billionaire? No, then you're not worthy.

2:38:05And so just like, I think we have these things. It's just like you're unbalanced. It's like you're not worthy. There's these things that work to program to say, oh, that's bad. You have to tell everyone they're worthy. You're everyone's beautiful. No, if everyone are beautiful, then no one's beautiful. And yet again, we're back at square one. And so it's, it's, I guess, drinking the tonic. It's, it's going through the shit, which is honestly the boring stuff that no one wants to do for an extended period of time.

2:38:39and accepting that you suck and that it is okay because the first step is accepting that you suck so that you can do the second step which is doing something about it. What about you're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are? That's... I mean I'm obviously in the business space and that follows up with the other one with the imposter syndrome. I people are like man, how do you not suffer from impostor center? I was like, because I've done what I said, I've done.

2:39:10And the people who get up on stage and try and teach a class, and shit, they haven't done, it's like that, like you feel like an imposter when you're an imposter. Like, don't try and kill that voice, listen to that voice and get the evidence to make that voice shut the fuck up. Like, if, like, if I get on stage and I say, I can bench 315, Do I feel like an imposter when I say that? No, I stay fat. And so... And so... And so, presumably if you're pioneering and breaking new ground, you know, you just put the biggest investment that you ever did into this new thing. That is a new level that you get to.

2:39:46And that's one that's to do with finance, but there could be another one that's to do with capacity or competence. You could be sitting down in a room doing a deal which is time bound in a way that it's never been before or is in an industry only tangential to one that you've been in before. Each time that you do something new, by definition you're in an imposter because you haven't done it before. Now, if you're teaching, that's different. But if you're entering, if you're growing sufficiently quickly, most of the time it's fresh snow. So, I would like, this is a fat topic I love. But I think the difference between doing something new and being an imposter is one is pretending you'd be something that they're not.

2:40:25So like I made the biggest investment school. I'm making a bet that I think communities are going to be huge And I think that there's a ton of people who want to you know teach skills they have in communities, etc And school .com can help but like It would only be an imposter if I said this is like I guarantee it no matter what this is going to be the biggest thing ever and One of the big things that I repeat and from the marketing front I said all the time I say state the facts and tell the truth like the best marketing in the entire world is truth. Now, if the truth isn't compelling, it doesn't mean you lie.

2:41:02It means you change the world to make the facts compelling. As in, if I say, man, I wanna be, like I, you see this one all the time, 18 year olds were like, I wanna be a motivational speaker, right? it and say, okay, well, what are your facts? You've done nothing. Great. So they then lie so that they can try and claim success that they don't deserve so they can get authority that they can't back up and eventually are called out and are flattened to be fair. They only impress people who don't know anything anyways. So if they're honest about it, they look at their facts and say, what would a motivational speaker have to have in order for them to have authority?

2:41:51And then that becomes your action list of what you need to do. And then once those facts are the truth, then you can state the facts and tell the truth, and then people will be like, wow, that's so motivational. But all you did was tell the truth. And so like, that is why I've so hardily rejected one like, you are worthy, you're not worthy. If you had it, then you wouldn't even need to say you were worthy because you'd already fucking have it. And if you were in like I struggled with imposter syndrome. Why you only struggle with imposter syndrome because you're fucking lying. Like that's why you feel like an imposter.

2:42:23And now they're like, why didn't the thing is is you can fudge the truth. Like you can you can not lie is very different than telling the truth. Like I can make something seem a certain way without deliberately breaking the law, but I'll know. And that's why you feel like an imposter because you fucking know. And there's the guy in the other room is clearing his throat and be like, that's not fucking true. And then that discord. But if you just say what you have done or you say what you are doing, I'm making this big investment. It's a big bet for me. The reason I'm making this bet is because I see this trend and I think it's a good idea.

2:42:55I could be fucking wrong. But I'm not gonna feel like an imposter because that's the truth. Thinking about the community thing I had a conversation a little while ago. I don't think that you're far off wrong, especially in an age of automation. And this guy made a really great point, which you probably thought of, which is one of the very few things that you can't automate is community. Can't AI community? No. What you're going to have, I mean, maybe, maybe in bots in a, yeah, exactly one guy, one guy and a thousand bots that are all doing it. Maybe GPT 10 can do that or whatever, but the next this into a quartile period, whatever we're coming up to, is the easiest way to hedge against automation, I think, is to focus on community.

2:43:40All right, next one. If you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you might as well be in a good mood for no reason. If it's not going to change your life, it shouldn't change your mood. If the cost is peace of mind, don't buy it. Yeah, if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, then you can be in a good mood for no reason, Which means that if you can do something that's amazing and still have a shit day It means you can do something that sucks and have a good day Which means the entire excuse around I don't want to do all these hard things because as a proxy it makes my mood sad Is ridiculous because it means that we are ultimately in control of How we want to perceive the work that we do and so I think that is ultimately the most freeing thing that you can do in terms of how you can Equip yourself to get through those harder periods

2:44:31Why do you think there's so much cynicism at the moment, especially on the internet? It's easier. You can always defend no. Like, we actually do with this a lot at EchoesTo .com from an investment perspective, and we actually have to check ourselves, which is it's always easy to find a reason not to do an investment. So we have a no bias. And you should have an, I mean, you should overall have a no bias, like you should say, okay, here's all the things that could go wrong. And you have to kind of think that way because you have to manage risk. But if you say no to everything, you're always right in the short term.

2:45:06But you're, but if you never make an investment, you're wrong in the one way that matters, which is you get no return. And so like you always miss the short term losses, but you lose the big long term gain. And so it's meant, again, this is a continuum to be managed more than a problem to be solved. But cynicism is short term. It's like every, so when you, so, okay, this is, so when you go home, right, and you want to start a new business or you have a girl that you're bringing back and your friends and your family are like, she's not going to last or like, this isn't going to, this isn't going to be forever.

2:45:41They are right. Literally every single time except for the one time you bring your wife home. And in that time, they're all wrong and it's the one time that fucking matters. And so the idea that but the thing is is because of the false positives or the true positives they might have been right literally 19 out of 20 times and if they were right the first time and the second time and the third time and the fourth time Why would they bet against no on the fifth time or the 50th time? But you only need one yes or one positive to change your entire life and so there's this habit and that's where cynicism comes from where we get so many positive reinforcers for saying no and being right.

2:46:20But it's only short term being right because you have to make big bets to win big. And that also means that you're wrong plenty of times and people aren't willing to look stupid for being wrong. This school bet could go wrong. I'm betting it's not. But everything has risk. And I've been public about it, right? And so like, if anything, but like I've played this out. So like I like I'll tell you I played this that I was like, if it goes wrong, I'll document the things that I learned and then I'll apply next time. And I'll do what I've always done. Stay the facts until the truth. It is strange to think about how being cynical or skeptical or kind of sadonic or cutting or a loof, it's used as a proxy for being smart.

2:47:13The worst thing that anybody could be accused of is naive That's what they're trying to optimize against they don't want to be seen as naive. Oh you can fucking you hope that everything is gonna be good Oh, that's I mean that's cute like you know the world will teach you it'll eat don't worry don't worry It's like it'll you'll let you'll let yeah people don't want to be naive and They'll be right And that's what's that's what's painful is that it takes more effort to start in the beginning and more people are right about the fact they're like, hey, you're not going to hit it big and guess what?

2:47:46A month in, you're not. But they're only measuring on months and at six months, you're also not going to hit it big yet. And they're going to be like, I'm still fucking right. And at a year, you're still not going to hit it big. And they'll still be fucking right. And every day that you haven't hit it, they're going to feel like they were right. But they're wrong because they're measuring in days and you're measuring in decades. This idea from Gwinder called the cynical genius illusion, cynical people are seen to be smarter, but sizable research suggests they actually tend to be dumber. Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence, but a substitute for it, a way to shield oneself from betrayal and disappointment without having to actually think.

2:48:23There's a tweet on a Doomsday Money Twitter guy and he said, yeah, he's predicted did 16 out of the last three recessions.

2:48:36And the thing is, is that no one recalls the other 13 times that I was wrong. And they don't recall all of the gains that probably were made in the marketplace by people who didn't sell during that time period. Though is this. Bro, you know, people forwards shit on WhatsApp. and if it's been forward lots of times, it even says at the top forwarded many times. It's like a little warning and this happened I think around COVID. There was an image of one guy, one squaddy wearing like army gear walking through the streets of London and this was forwarded on WhatsApp as evidence that the army was going to come and hold people in the house at gunpoint.

2:49:20And if you left it was going to be martial law was going to be deployed on the streets of London and this went fucking nuclear. Completely interstellar, absolutely everywhere. What happened with that? What happened with that thing? Not a single person who decided to spout this half fucking baked opinion that never turned out to be true, ever got held to account for that. And I must have received that message five times. I'm like, hey, you don't get to just make these ridiculous, actually stupid fucking claims about the world. and then no one called you to account.

2:49:59I'm gonna hit on the cynicism point. The world belongs to optimists. Because if you're going to do anything big, you have to believe that it can happen. Otherwise, it never will. That's Sean Puri thing. The cynics get to be right, and the optimists get to be rich. Yeah. Like, if you look at it from a percentage of success rate, I've been wrong more times than I've been right. I have failed more times than I've succeeded. But you always succeed more and are right more in the big ways Than the people who've been right all along and are wrong. Trevor says this might my editor. He says 99 % right and 100 % wrong So like they're they're right 99 % of the time But they're wrong 100 % because the only thing that matters is the big one at the end Like, your family and friends will say that every girl that you ever date is not good enough.

2:50:55Except for the one time you find the girl that you're actually going to marry. And then, it doesn't matter. Or like, this won't last. Or like, this business idea. It's not going to work. And you might have nine failures. I felt my first nine businesses didn't really amount to anything. Nine. Nine. As in the first one, spent time fucking failed. Second one. This one will be different. Fucking failed. Third one, this one, this is the one, and then seven, six more after that, right? I'm just painting this picture because like it's painful as shit because the whole time everyone is telling you, I told you so, and they're right.

2:51:32Today. But not forever. If the cost is peace of mind, don't buy it. Why?

2:51:43I use the peace of mind as a indicator for breaching values. So that's the I want to become known rather than sacrifice my reputation in order to do so. And so for me, I would lose peace of my life right on the edge. I'm like, I don't know, this is a little bit edgy. I had a guy who shared a bash clip of me. and it's a bash clip. Oh, like somebody like took my clip and then was like, this is wrong. Oh, right. And so I looked at the guy's profile and I saw he was a VC and I was like, huh, okay. I know who this is. Oh, and so I deemed him and I was like, do you disagree with this? And he said something and then I just eviscerated him and he was like, you're right, I overstepped because I wanted to try and do a viral clip, you are fundamentally right and I was wrong.

2:52:44And so like that is what I would never wanna be. Like that is disgusting to me. And so the cost of making a viral clip to try and trend jump, when I know that fundamentally the thing isn't right, is not worth the price. There's a, this shows up in other ways, so I had it. What the fuck did I do? I, I think I tried to throw a used splendor packet in a bin, in a restaurant, you know what? I did that, but I was leaving. And I was like, it's next to the bin, someone will get it. And I walked 30 yards away. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Turn around, went back, put it in the bin. Yeah, you'd know. That's the peace of mind.

2:53:36Yeah, I know. This is another one of those interesting reframes. This is really, really interesting to me. If the cost is peace of mind, don't buy it.

2:53:50You can see, and I did for a long time, my inability to move in as ruthless of a way as other people do, as a weakness, as a vulnerability. And I realized in retrospect that it's just a higher standard that I'm holding myself to. And that can be, that will result in many times me doing things and having things that I need to overcome. I'm working on my people pleasing tendencies, as hard as I can at the moment, to not. To not, yeah, I end up, I don't like to disappoint people. I don't like to do things that cause you to the people to feel bad or feel hurt or to tell them things that They don't hear that's why that Dr.

2:54:36Robert glove and no more Mr. Nice guy was just so fucking like very very very insensitive But I realized even with that I had to add a conversation with a friend and it's to do with this book And there's a bunch of ideas Everybody's been working on in my friend group for quite a while and I was like I really want to write about this thing and and sent him a long, overly arduous voice note, explaining about how conflicted I was because it's not my idea. Now, no one owns the truth. That's one of the brilliant things about working through quotes and things like this is no one owns it, right? Like if it's accurate, nobody gets to own the truth.

2:55:13It's just an insight about the way that reality exists. So I sent him this big, long voice note, and he replied to me and said, and I, in it, I'm over pattern matching a lot of the things I'm doing is people pleasing. Like it's the, I think I sent you that tweet about, I just learned about the recency bias and of all of them I have to say it's my favorite one. Right. So you see this new thing and it's the hot new toy that you're playing with or the shiny new toy. And he responded and he said, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you in amongst all of the stuff and the book and the show and all of the different people pulling on your attention that the first place that you would go to when thinking about this idea is how I would feel rather than how you can like weel it so that you get the outcome that you want or whatever.

2:55:58I would be very hesitant in you saying, are you calling that people pleasing when it's one of the reasons that I love you as a friend? I was like, huh, that's interesting. That's a reframe that I hadn't anticipated. And that is again the piece of mind thing. Now your level for peace of mind maybe different to somebody else's, but I don't think that that's something that you should be ashamed of. You know, as a fun challenge for anyone who's listening, try telling the truth in social settings. So when someone invites you to a party, instead of coming up with a fake excuse that you both know as a fake excuse, just say I don't want to go.

2:56:43You know, really fuck with you. And if someone like says, hey, can you help me move? You're like, I don't want to. It's very freeing because the thing is that like, their response is on them. And if I just, I try and anchor myself to truth. If I just tell the truth and state the facts, I'm good with me. And if someone, and I asked them, because I had a exchange recently where I said that, I say it often and now people who are around me are accustomed to the fact that I will just state the facts and tell the truth. I said, would you have preferred that I've lied to you? And the guy just, so you would prefer that I lie, I will not be associated with someone who would prefer that I lie to them, because it makes my life difficult, because then I'd have to lie, which then would breach one of my values.

2:57:41So in the future, I had someone who, recently was like, hey, if you need anything, let me know how I can help. I'd be like, you don't mean that, because if I actually need something, you will not help. And so it's really uncomfortable for a lot of people, because it breaks a lot of social norms. But I think that learning, it's kind of like the hundred knows, is like being comfortable, like it's just being comfortable with the truth. and the truth is one of the scariest, ugliest things. You know, like, why don't you wanna go on another day with me? I don't like you.

2:58:18You're not worthy.

2:58:24But like people are so uncomfortable with that. And I think that the, I've just tried to shed bullshit as much as I could for my life. And it's just me thinking a lot easier and also dealing with relationships a lot easier because you also, by shedding social niceties, when you do also state the truth, when I say, I think you fucking killed that. People know it fucking carries weight because you don't just say that. And so I would say most of my team, for example, if I pay a compliment, they know that I mean it. And I don't have to say like, hey, if I'm being honest, I really feel like, I don't have to, I don't, like, and it makes your words mean what you say.

2:59:00And I think that is like I aspire to be a man who when I say things people know that I mean them And I think a way to do that is to stop saying things that I don't mean And so I'm trying to cut as much of the words that are niceties and things that I don't mean and are nonsensical and bullshit That I've been taught to say in this social situation when someone says that makes sense. I say no. It doesn't make any sense people are like oh Because when someone says make sense at the end of a sentence, we are trained to just not and say, yeah, yeah, even though if you didn't even process it. But if I don't think it makes sense, I say, no, I don't think it makes sense or no, I don't understand.

2:59:41And again, you don't want to look stupid. But looking stupid in the moment so that you can better understand something makes you not look stupid for the rest of your life when you actually understand it. And so, that has been a huge effort of mine, is to make words great again. And what they mean again. Yeah, and I really, I spot you that on my writing, especially in my social relationship, because time is so valuable when we have so little of it, and I don't want to waste any of it pretending to be someone or say things that I don't mean. It's normal to not know what you're doing. If you did, it wouldn't be called growth.

3:00:24High five your fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and carry on. Do you get tired, stressed, sad, hungry, frustrated, and focused? Do you feel misunderstood? Great. You're human. You don't need medication. I have a huge vehement distaste for mental medication. And I think one is because it's overprescribed too because people over WebMD themselves and fundamentally people find a problem with being human. And I think a lot of that is because of the social norm that we should be never hungry, never sad, never angry, never frustrated, never feel like we're misunderstood. And those are the, those are the troughs and peaks of humanity.

3:01:13and we can't only wish for sunny days, because otherwise we'd have droughts and no one would, everyone would die. And so it's wishing for something that isn't true and will never happen, it's wanting a lie, which is why I'm so against it. Now are there people who they can test their neurology and whatever? Maybe, but like honestly, 100 years ago, this shit didn't exist. And people just dealt with life. And I think people are happier than they are now. And so clearly this solution hasn't been much of a solution at all. And so I, if I, you know, I try to have, I don't have that many extreme stance.

3:01:50Well, maybe I do. But one of my extreme stances is that there is nothing wrong with you. Because even if there is something wrong with you, how do you benefit by saying there is something wrong with you and then accepting that label into yourself? Because the alternative to that is accepting your current existence as maybe this is better than everyone else's and I'm just choosing to believe that it's wrong. And all of this is around some big mighty should that we think and that we worship, that we should be a certain way that we're not. And I think that discrepancy, that word, I've tried to eliminate it as much as you may possibly for my vocabulary because like I shouldn't what, I should nothing according to whom.

3:02:28Why should I be happier? Why should I be have less anxiety? Why should I feel more understood? And so like pretty much the beginning of every ad for like LaVitra or whatever, you know, or whatever the new serotonin of SSRI thing is, is like they describe humanity. They just say like, are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you horny? Are you just satisfied in any way? Well, the cure of that is a pill, which I hoardedly decry anything that gives it if -then statement for happiness. So like you will own nothing and be happy. Like you wanna say that you're gonna change my external condition to change how I feel.

3:03:07I just reject it as any kind of if then I will be happy. But like the pill, the over medication part, I've had too many people too close to me, ruin their lives, topping from SSRI, SSRI, and getting on cocktails of pills and un, and they've got a sleep med and they've got a wake up med. And they're just a walking pharmacy. It's crazy for people who aren't American to look at the way that America deals with this. I remember, so in the UK, just for context, you can't get prescribed melatonin. You can't buy it over the counter. You can't buy it on Amazon. My video guy, when he flies over here, takes it back like some, like he's fucking smuggled, like he's like, hablow escapable, but with melatonin tablets instead.

3:03:57Like going into CVS, am I allowed to get this? is that's the degree of difficulty that it is to get prescribed anything. And in America, the first place that people term and they have a problem is the pill bottle. I mean, I have two physician parents. So like, and I would say Western, you know, for the most part, Western medicine through, they'll just believe in all pharmaceuticals and all that kind of stuff. And so I grew up really close to it. My grandfather is a physician. So like just lots of medicine and the family in general and I am. I just hate it. I really do. I don't hate a lot of things but I really I really I hate I hate what it does to people and more the underlying thing is that they reject being human and they think there's something wrong with them and so many people waste all of their time trying to solve a problem that is life rather than living it and it drives me nuts.

3:04:56like they search for the medication rather than confronting the problem. Like, you don't have an anxiety problem. You need to deal with whatever the thing you're worried about is. Like, I mean, I have too many controversial beliefs. I'm getting into too much of it. Like, you drink a lot because you're stressed. If you deal with the thing that stresses you, that's the trigger for you drinking. So, yes, there's addictive properties to drinking. I'm not denying that. But the thing that leads to the drinking, the condition that creates that, that's something that you can attack. And so, I think so little attention is given to accepting reality rather than saying there's something wrong that people waste their entire lives searching for an answer that doesn't exist.

3:05:46What about, it's normal to not know what you're doing. If you did, it wouldn't be called growth. High five of your fear and certainty and doubt and carry on.

3:06:05If you knew what you were doing, then you would be stagnating because you'd be doing nothing now. And so if you're going to do something new, then that is what would be the catalyst for growth. And so you can't want to grow and also want to know everything you're doing at the same time. It's like the two beliefs contradict one another. And so I think that's a lot of a lot of the discontent that people suffer from is they want two things that are polar opposites. They want the really strong character, they want the easy life. Like one is the price of the other. You have a hard life to have great character.

3:06:45You have an easy life. If you should be character, everything came easy. You want to grow. You don't want hardship. Hardship creates growth. And so they want both and you can't. It's wanting the Jordans without paying the price. The price isn't bad. It's just the price is what it is. And so it's just do you want the Jordans or not. And if you do, then don't lament the price tag. Pay the price tag and be happy you have the Jordans. And if you don't want the Jordans, then don't buy them. There's something in here is around comparing the lessons that people who have achieved success tell you about how to also achieve success when they're using that pattern, which is what they look like they know what they're doing.

3:07:28I should look like I know what I'm doing. I should feel like I know what I'm doing. But you don't know what you're doing. You're a white belt, and that person's a third -degree black belt. And whatever it is that you're trying to pursue. Stayed the facts until the truth. I mean, the amount of 900 follower Instagram accounts that all I see is people espousing advice on how to grow their social media following.

3:08:04You're never going to win. Like you don't get it. like you're like I've been following like you don't get it because the content of what you're putting out Sorry, the evidence that encapsulates your message Disproves literally everything you say before you open your mouth and the thing is is that people are obsessing about the algorithm And this type of font and I should do vertical format and I should do horizontal format And I use this as an analogy that you can draw to anything but But everyone has that friend who is a train wreck on relationships, who gives relationship advice. It's just like, it doesn't even matter if the advice is good.

3:08:40You're a train wreck. It's the fat friend who gives advice on how to be fit. It's just like, and they're like citing all these studies and you should try these supplements. It's like, you're a fat fuck. Just shut up. Stop. Like, there's, don't waste your breath. No one is listening. And so it's just, it's missing the big, obvious thing. And so again, it's like that big dominoge. You're like, I want to get into fitness. Like there was a friend of mine actually who's in the fitness space and he's like I really want to grow my fitness business And obviously like I've books on it and I've videos and did that for a whole past life and I was like dude, you're not in shape You say but I know all these as like you don't look like someone that anyone wants to look like And so the thing is like for whatever you're doing the big one thing is like if you were look like a shredded god.

3:09:29You could say eat fried chicken every day and people would buy your shit. Because like what's the one big domino that if I just did that, everything else would take care of itself. Do that and every ounce of effort you're putting into not doing that is a waste. Basically the V -Trad model. That's actually really nice guys. Yeah they're here in Vegas. I don't know. He's like public enemy number one. for the fitness bros. What was your definition of trauma that you taught me on the phone? Oh yeah. So because this word is so thrown around on social media, my god. I was like, okay, I have to define this so that I can try and understand it.

3:10:10So I believe trauma is when you have a punishing event that permanently changes behavior. That's it. So if you are a kid and you have a child, Touch the stove and you burn your hand and you never touch stove again. You were traumatized Now the thing is is that that's a positive consequence So is trauma bad? I don't know was the consequence bad in that it's situation. No And so a lot of people use the this person traumatized me as the as the the transgression where as the question is what was the result of that quote trauma because trauma is just accelerated learning. And so if you have PTSD for example, if you were abroad and had lots of bombs going off, then you had rapid learning.

3:11:07So you have trauma that permanently changes your behavior around loud noises. And so you generalize loud noises from this environment to now when someone honks you you know freak out and you think about those situations, right? And so just defining the world around me has helped me navigate it a lot better so that I can understand what we're talking about. Because there are so many, you know, trauma is a feeling in your body that you have to release the trauma, like what the fuck are you talking about? You don't release trauma. You change behavior due to a stimulus, that's it. And so if you want to change your behavior back, you create a new condition that reinforces the new behavior you want.

3:11:49Period. Because otherwise, we appeal to mysticism and we just say a lot of like nonsensical bullshit that the whole woo -woo world is all about. I just spoke a woo -woo event, which was really funny. How did that go? Surprisingly, well, I just started by being like, you will all disagree with most of the things I say. But they kind of mysticized my my nihilism, so I worked out fine. How do you do that? Well, because I just describe actions. And so they describe those actions as attraction for whatever. And I it's like attract for pal, whatever. If you, you know, make a hundred calls, you'll have more people who know who you are than if you don't.

3:12:24That's the same as putting out an energetic frequency to the quantum realm. It's that's that you want money. I have no idea what any of that means. Dude, there was a podcast that I got linked to from a girl in Austin who got inducted into some weird cult that was sacrificing period blood at the full moon so that they could get Birken bags. Yeah. Austin's a weird place, so you were there for a while. I was. Yeah, well, two words from it. Spat you out. I like, I appreciate you, man. Thank you for coming on. What's next? What can people expect from you next few months? Well, all my effort is in the school games.

3:13:05So we're, I mean, I can talk about them, I can not talk about them. Yeah. So yeah, so I just made the biggest investment in my life in not co -enter of school .com. It's a platform where you can build what you want to build, learn what you want to learn, and schools will give you the tools to communicate the education to help you. And so we've actually created a whole thing where people can start all this stuff for free because I just, I believe, my whole platform has been education. That's what I believe in. I think the education system is broken and teachers don't get paid or given the resources to actually teach students and they're, you know, they're supposed to teach tests that they know don't help students, students get educated on stuff that doesn't matter in the real world and they go into amounts of debt for a piece of paper that doesn't make them anything to pay off the debt that they're in for the rest of their lives.

3:13:53And I just, I hate all of it, which is why we started making the content that we do. And so this is one big investment that I'm doing to try and make my small dent towards helping fix that and I don't like I obviously talk about business. That's what I know. Okay But one person can't can't do that like I can't change I mean I can try You know, but like I don't I don't think one more one person's gonna change the world and so I wanted to invest in a platform That would help other people do that for one another and so whether it's like You know how to paint and you want to teach me how to paint.

3:14:26You know how to fix Honda's and you want to teach me how to do that. Like there are so many more useful skills that we can trade with one another. And I think Ben Franklin said there's no more high, there's no more noble, a deed than to help another, no more, to educate. And I wholeheartedly believe that. And so, I mean, that's what I'm investing my dollars and my time into. And so, yeah, that's the, that's like my whole next year. In terms of what I'm investing, obviously, at Acquisition .com, we continue to invest for a family office. So, if you have a business that you want to sell or scale, you can hit us up.

3:15:01Oh, yeah. I'm going to enjoy watching it happen, man. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. Thank you.