Balancing Purpose and Profit | Sam Parr PT 1

0:00I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine which is I take them over to Whole Foods. and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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1:52Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:42Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stealic Podcast. If you're following closely, which I assume you all are, with bated breath, my recovery, I got my first run in on Monday, did a mile, walked a mile. Then Tuesday, I ran two miles, and walked a mile. And then today I ran four miles. I'm not exactly back, but I feel better. Actually, I felt a little blister popping up on my heel, which was unpleasant. And then also I said, I'm grateful for it, right? Because it means I'm getting to do the thing that I like. And I get to, I will pay the tax as Seneca said, I'll pay the tax.

3:27If blisters, if a blister is a result of getting to run again, I'll take it. But it's funny because the topic actually came up when I had today's guest on the podcast. I was talking about how I was a little bit out of commission because of the ankle and that I was having to think about it as its own kind of marathon or ordeal to not get to do this thing that I get so many physical and mental benefits from. I would have to practice the virtue of temperance in holding back as opposed to pushing forward. And we talk about that more in the second half of the podcast, which I'll bring you later in the week.

4:08But in the first one, Sam jokes that this is the business edition of The Daily Stoic because we talk about money, we talk about growth, we talk about newsletters, we talk about being goal-oriented and how to do things that make you happy and, of course, how to build a life or a business or a career around that. Also, So Sam is someone I've known for a very long time. I've known his work for a long time because he's the founder of The Hustle, which was a huge newsletter and media company. And we met at a conference in Colorado, I think, and hung out and became friends. And then he moved to Texas and we've gotten to see each other quite a bit as well.

4:48I've been on his podcast, My First Million, a few times. So I'll link to those episodes. But in the meantime, I wanted to bring you part one of my conversation with the one and only Sam Parr. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at TheSamParr. You can get his newsletter, The Anti-MBA, and check out his podcast, My First Million. I'll talk to you in the next episode.

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6:28Go to HelloFresh.com slash Stoic10FM to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. One box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's HelloFresh.com Stoic10FM to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it.

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7:43And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. and thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from The Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's GiveWell.org, code The Daily Stoic to donate or find out more.

8:25i i think the the the not exercising is a harder adjustment than the pain from the thing yeah do you lift weights uh not like a lot i mean i have like a gym but i don't think i could do that either on your upper body you could yeah but so i need i need the high of cardio i feel that yeah yeah and i i mean you just got to swim or something which i know you're into swimming i do like swimming i'm i i told myself i would do like a week completely of nothing because i mean it's you're still using your ankle when you're swimming uh but uh like when i do like when it doesn't matter what i do i still need the card especially if i'm writing which i'm i just started the new book and so if i uh if i don't have it i go like out of my fucking mind and dude you have like a whole like complex here like a team and everything yeah i didn't realize how i think we talked about this when i was on your thing yeah you talked to you said it's five or six i don't know it just we're all remote it just doesn't feel as cool it feels cooler now that yeah that you have stuff here yes like my team i've got a lot of people but it's like i'm in my bedroom that's true yeah no it's like a real it's an office right it's an office that's also bookstore and that's like cool now right oh to have an office is cool yeah like because like i mean i had an office like this three years ago but now i'm like fucking in my bedroom in my pajamas like the numbers are good but like that's nothing else is good i'm lonely um yeah i don't know i like the original idea was this was all going to be a complex uh that was from the beginning we set it all up and then like i think we hired our first two people in february of 2020 so then And that all went out of the, you know, out the window for like two plus years.

10:11And then now it's like, every once in a while, my wife would be like, oh, wait, this is what we're like. This is what we were planning on happening. Like, this is it. It sort of snuck up on us. Where do you where do your kids go to school? Right here? Yeah, right here. And your wife is. She was here. She just went to go pick one of them from school. My wife was going to come, but her baby was crying too much. Yeah, I think you start. maybe we were late on it but like anytime you can avoid getting in the car you should just avoid getting in the car i know but she loves you and we've been to the bookstore before and she wanted to get out i get that but anyways yeah i'm just i i don't it's i'm only like four days in so i i don't i haven't got the withdrawals yet but the withdrawals will happen from what not exercising oh you're only four days in so this is the second time i did like My foot's all bruised up and everything.

11:04So I'm trying to like... I'm actually like... I decided to think about it like, okay, the marathon is like, how long can I go and not lose my mind? That's a good way to think about it. Do you see Casey broke three? Three hours on the marathon? I did see that. That was a great video he made about it. It's really cool. He's like hardcore. He runs like a lot. Do you know who Sahil Bloom is? He lives here, right? No, he doesn't live here. but he started training and seven months after training he did 257 a marathon yes that's nuts nuts which marathon or are you just just no no he did he did a real race uh i don't remember but he did uh somewhere in boston or something not the not boston but somewhere around there wow he did it and uh i would he told me he was going to do it and i was like no you're not you're not going to be able to do that and then he ran 1745 in the 5k do you a lot of people are very big on goals i don't really do any fitness related goals whatsoever i don't think he had a goal he was just like working out and he was like i'm gonna try this race let's well i guess it was a goal but it wasn't like he was just like this is fun let's just keep going uh you had something you were doing the combine or something yeah i do it yeah yeah i did really well i i did average for a wide receiver really yeah but so walk me through this i'm a dude are we recording yeah i was a division one track and field athlete so it's not like i roll up roll off the couch like i was built but how long ago was that years ago but i still trained for it like i still like work out and i and fast twitch muscles like you either have it or you don't so like me trying to run a marathon it would be it would be very challenging for me that no amount of training would make it as easy for me as it is for someone who's slow twitch muscle yes right sure you just someone who can do long distances versus someone who it's hard to do long distance yes and like i could roll out of bed and jump 30 inches in the vert like i was always able to do that and i can still do that And so I trained for a quarter to do it.

12:56I ran four, six in the 40. I jumped 33 inches in the vert, 10, seven in the broad. And then I benched 225, 16 times. And that's like almost about average. How far from that was your, was it from your average though? Like, so when you were - In high school and college, I did a lot better. Okay. But, but I mean, when you were like, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to see how I can do in the NFL combine. Did you have a baseline? Like how far is that from where you were when you had the idea to do this crazy thing? Not significant. I was 70 % there. Wow. Yeah. But you just didn't get out of shape because I work out a lot and I pick a new goal every quarter.

13:33But also, again, it's like sometimes you have it or you don't like there's some sure and that just happens to be my skill set. And I was born a little bit built to do that stuff. And I've always been able to squat heavy weights like I could roll out of bed and squat like 380 or 400 like without too much training. but if you try to get me to run a marathon i would i could i mean i couldn't run one mile right now faster than seven minutes you pick a fitness goal every quarter yeah typically right now i had a kid so like i'm a little wander right now i'm like just stay fit while working the least amount in the gym yeah but yeah i usually pick a quarter usually it's lately it's been like a bench or a squat goal the combine right now i'm slowly gearing up i want to do an ultra an ultra marathon uh before that it was have you done a marathon between there no i've done what's the longest distance i've done a half iron man okay so i ran 15 or 18 miles before in a training run but the ultra seems easier actually than running a marathon fast you know what i mean yes yeah sure sure sure because uh an ultra marathon is like are you alive at the end of it yeah that's success versus like uh how fast can you do right and that and i actually think running 50 miles at a slow pace will be easier than running marathon when you're trying when you're red lighting you know you know i'm saying maybe yeah i don't know i haven't done i haven't done neither have i so we'll see no as a theory it makes sense it makes sense to me like and and i the competition the the competition is less in the sense that everyone in the ultra marathon i would make up is just trying to not die versus the marathon which is like you're racing against each other you don't pick goals i don't i don't pick any fitness goals i have like a programming like what do you how do you know what you're gonna do next week i just do the same thing like every week i just run i just run every day uh or swim sometimes i sometimes i break it up with swimming or biking but for me it's it's more i just i just do that thing to get to even every day so typically the way that you gain muscles you have to do progressive lifting yes yeah yeah more weight or more reps, less rest, whatever it is.

15:39You don't have any progressive. No, I would say it's almost entirely mental and emotional regulation. And the fact that it is a physical activity is a coincidence. That's funny. No, I like to have some type of target, like a benchmark where I can see some type of improvement. So it could be like stretching. It's like this quarter, I'm going to try and do the splits. Like let's just see what I could. I like improving. There was a joke on Eastbound and Down where someone asked if he's like training for a marathon or something. And he goes, I'm trying not to be the best at exercising. No, he's like, I play real sports.

16:12I'm not trying to be the best at exercising. I sometimes think about that. Like I'm not trying to win at my hobbies. Like I like doing my hobbies. Yeah, I understand that. I'm like that with reading. So when I read, I tell people I don't read to learn. I read because this is just an interesting topic. Yes. And so I was looking at your bookstore. There was like the self-help section. I was like, oh, between the age of 20 and 28, I read all of these. Yeah. And then now I haven't read any of those in years. And it's just strictly what I find interesting. So with reading, it's strictly interesting.

16:47Learning sometimes happens. Well, it always happens. But that's not the main point. Yes. But yeah, with working out, I tell people, well, actually, Scott Galloway was on your pod. He said something that was amazing. Okay. Do you remember what he said about how he exercises? he says um i want to be able to um uh kill and eat everyone in the room or outrun them and i was like that's great that's like my it's like yeah i kind of work out that way but i also just say i want to look awesome feel awesome and live to be old yes and feel great while i'm old and that's basically it yeah i think uh i see this with reading where people are like into speed reading or they told me they listen to audiobooks on like eight speed or whatever and i go why like i enjoy doing it i don't try to rush through it in fact like well i think speed reading is nonsense right well of course i think it's a scam but the point there are people who are trying to do it faster right like even if speed reading does not exist there are there are people who are trying to read faster meanwhile there's like slow eating you know like actually pleasurable activities people try to make take up more time not less time yeah with like i've been for building companies I've been trying to build companies slower now.

17:59Like projects, like businesses build slower. Because what's the point? I mean, what are you rushing towards? It not being over? The next thing? I used to rush towards things, and I'm happy I did. No, I'm saying that to me, the question is, why are you trying to get this over as quickly as possible? Like, I thought you enjoyed doing it. And obviously running, if you're not doing it quickly, you're not really running, right? And so you're not getting any of the – like, I also walk. But the point is, there are some things – you walk i don't know i don't you think you get 10 000 easily easily yeah uh i mean obviously not the last uh eight days yeah or whatever but um no i'm always walking uh and i i usually do my phone calls walking i do everything walking but uh i'm not trying to i'm not trying to get it over with i i like doing it like like lately i've been running in the morning so i run i watch the sun come up while I'm running and I come home and then I sort of go I'm trying to get to an emotional and uh like uh hormonal place where I'm chill and if I don't I can feel it like well because you're not a chill person oh yeah no you are a kinetic you have kinetic energy like when I hung out with you a few years ago like you do what I do as well your legs are bouncing uh-huh like you're you need to move i don't think you're a chill person i think you're maybe you're chiller no no i was joking i'm definitely not you're not chill though yeah no i'm not no not at all i think i'm an intense person and that is a i would rather get that energy out there than in other places no and i feel that usually when i think about working out it's just like uh you know like when your dog like you're like he needs to go for a run like yes that's how i kind of i feel about it.

19:45I'm like, I'm going insane. I got to get out. I got to move. I got to tire myself out. Yeah, of course. No. And so, and I know when I'm, when I'm, uh, writing, I'm usually generating, uh, a certain amount of frustration, right? Because it's not, you're not anywhere close to finishing and you're, you're basically when you're doing, when you're in the midst of a creative thing, there's some parts of it that are pleasurable, but for a good chunk of it, what you're doing is like just inventing problems for yourself. Right. Cause you're like, you're working, you're just going into areas that you then have to figure out and solve for, right?

20:18Like I'm, well, maybe I'll say this, or maybe I'll say this, and then I still have to figure out how that's going to go. And it'll be months from now until that's like perfect. So I'm just creating a bunch of open-ended frustration effectively, right? So if I don't have outlets to work out that frustration, other things are going to get the brunt of that frustration. So that's what the practices for me do you um with your family and your you have kids and everything do you acquire a lot of things like physical things yeah uh like are you like a conscientious consumer where you like try not to like buy a lot of crap i try to get rid of crap but i don't i'm not super conscious about not acquiring crap i've been but i'm also not conscious about acquiring crap well you said something about um you're doing this project and that just creates more product problems for you lately i've been noticing i'm like becoming gun like so into not buying things that like give clutter in my life sure that wears me down so much so i've got a i i've had like nice cars and i'm like this fucking sucks like this sucks like these tires are twenty five hundred dollars i don't even want to drive this thing it breaks or you go to turn it on the battery's dead it's just like stop oh oh you have to have special insurance for that you don't realize how many problems you know and then i need i have and then i have an assistant to help me manage a lot of the stuff and then i gotta go buy a bigger house to store the stuff and then i've got to pay money for 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come and throw away the stuff that held the stuff yeah then i've got to buy some more stuff to store the stuff yeah i'm like that's been my thing lately in 24 is i can't stand stuff i'm trying to get rid of everything and i don't want anything there's a george carlin joke about how to you it's stuffed other people's shit and then realizing also like uh as soon as you're not there what it is to other people how quickly it becomes obviously trash like if you're going through someone else's house or you are moving or whatever you you said you have a different you suddenly see all the stuff you've acquired from a different lens the worst immediately able to get rid of it whereas uh i think one of the hard parts about having kids is you so much stuff acquires a certain emotional significance to you even though it is the same garbage.

22:34And I'm angry at myself because I I'm like I need this stuff. Yeah. You know? And then so what I've been trying to live by is you know the phrase reduce, reuse, recycle? Uh-huh. Get rid of the recycle part. That's bullshit. Yeah. You know like recycling is nonsense. Like it gets all thrown away. Like. Yes. Metal is easy to recycle. Everything else is done. Yeah. But like you know the blue bin? Yeah. That's bullshit. Like you can't just throw like cardboard with ketchup on it, a green glass, and a soda can into the same thing, and it magically gets turned into a thing. We think all plastics are the same, but every plastic melts at a different temperature.

23:10You can't just... Not all plastics melt down into the same thing. And now China used to buy a lot of recycling. They don't really do that anymore. So I went and talked to, for some projects we had to do, I had to interview people who owned waste management companies. I'm like, dude, this all gets thrown away. It all goes to the garbage. yeah and so i'm like all right let's just get rid of recycling i'm just gonna reduce reuse that's it reduce reuse that's it sure it just not acquires stuff yes and anyway it's been bothering me yeah i mean like like i was i went through my garage the other day and i looked at i was like this garage is a graveyard it's a graveyard of kids i don't have anymore right like in the sense that okay here's like the single stroller then the double stroller then the running stroller that we used, but then I broke.

23:53So then I got another one. And it's just all this stuff from eras of my kids. And my kids aren't even that old, right? My oldest is seven, but already at seven, you have all these different phases that they've been through and are not in anymore. And the garage is just, um, all these different things are like little gravestones of the thing I won't do anymore. And so, so there's part of you that just goes clear it out. And then there's the other part of you that goes, I loved that. And then you don't want to get rid of it. And then you just keep it. And like my parents now just like unsolicited.

24:24It's like, oh, here's another package of plastic from my childhood. I can't stand it. And then what they're basically saying is like, here, you throw this away because they won't do it. You have this book called Perpetual Seller, right? Perennial Seller. Sorry, Perennial Seller. And I saw you give this great presentation on, I think you mentioned like Zildjian symbols. Yes. How do you say it? Yeah, Zildjian, I think. And like brands that last 100 plus years and classic books that last and they actually sell more. And I think that you're on track to doing that. And so you might be familiar with this, but have you heard of the buy it for life?

24:59There's a buy it for life movement. You know what that is? Yeah. So it's a big subreddit and there's groups on Facebook for it. But it's this idea, and I used to do this all the time, where I'm like, well, I don't need the$1 ,000 thing. I'll just buy the$50 thing. But the$50 thing you end up throwing away and you buy much more of that stuff. yeah and so what i've been really like gung-ho about is the buy it for life movement and so you buy things that can last decades so for example or hopefully lifetime so for example we're buying a crib right now for my kid yeah i want to get like i've been suckered into this amish thing which i don't even know if it's truly amish but the concept of like people did this by hand and like there's this one crib that it's a normal crib and then it turns into a toddler's bed and then you get this insert and it turns into a full-size bed so ideally they can have it from age zero to 18 or whatever.

25:47And then they say, and then their kid can actually use the same thing. And so what I'm trying to buy is things that can last a lifetime or more.

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28:57Interesting. My parents did send me like my wooden high chair from when I was a kid, but I would never put my kid in it. It's like a death trap, right? Like, so the problem is some of the stuff, it was designed to last, but it was designed around assumptions that haven't held up. Sure. But I do, speaking of kids, there's one, I think I put it in the talk sometimes. There's like i saw this picture of like an llb jacket it's like an llb kids jacket and it has uh like you know the spot where you write your kids name so they don't lose it at school but then underneath it has another line and another line and another line and the idea is like you should be writing multiple kids names in this jacket and patagonia if you go to patagonia's website they have a used section like where they want they're encouraging people to resell their products which ostensibly deprives them of revenue from the new stuff, right?

29:46The planned obsolescence is a capitalistic assumption built into most brands. And here, though, the marketing of it is, I think, important. They're saying, like, first off, we actually do care about the environment. We care about the environment more than us making more money. But they're also saying, like, our stuff has resale value because it's not garbage. Yeah. And I'm like a big fan of all that stuff right now. Yeah. Like think that's right i mean i have a pair of red wing boots that i'm on my fourth soul for i need to i i'm gonna i was gonna bring them into the office i found there's a little boot store like a shoe repair thing across the street that's been in business since like the 40s and i was gonna bring them there and have them send them in and they're they turn into like a new pair it's crazy and i remember i remember when i bought them prettier they look cooler yes of course well i remember when i bought them they were three hundred dollars and that was expensive i thought that was insane.

30:40I mean, I've since bought sneakers that cost that much money that are already falling apart. Meanwhile, yeah, I'm almost 15 years into these shoes. And they're amazing. What I've been focused on lately is things that last forever. I think that's right. Yeah. I think our generation, if you stay in the same house forever, if you don't move a lot. There were assumptions that I think made it, that society shifted, it made it easier and it made it a lot more sense to like get your stuff from Ikea than to get like a really good dresser because you were never gonna move that. You weren't gonna be driving that dresser across the country or moving it multiple times.

31:25Like if a couple is getting married at 20 years old and then staying together forever, it makes more sense to like invest in stuff that lasts if if everything the problem is so many other parts of our lives have become ephemeral so it becomes harder to like invest in stuff do you think you'll live in your current home forever or own it forever uh i think so i mean uh i haven't found anything that i like better and i've looked you know yeah i think so i mean but i'm different I bought like not different like I'm special but like we we bought like a ranch you're you're not supposed it's not like a uh a house you sell and then buy a bigger house than a house or something we're gonna probably sell our house and I'm gonna rent until I find the dream home that I want and I'm gonna buy a home that I intend to live in for 50 years but how do you know what that place is well I don't that's why I'm gonna rent I'm not gonna rush I'm gonna I'm just gonna rent a place you know the world you know our friend Rami he's like all going home about renting and I I tend to agree with him of like, I'm just going to rent until I know what it is I really want for a long period of time.

32:30When I interviewed Tim, he sat right there. He said he loves this expression, rich enough to rent. He rents too? No, his point is that there are things that like it's in many cases more efficient to buy something, right? Not in all cases. And maybe homeownership, it's not true. But the point is we go like they do the math and you go like, oh, it's more efficient if I buy it, right? or I could save some money over the long term if you buy it. And he's saying, what if you can get to a place financially where you don't care? You're just doing the thing that is easier and less of an imposition for you.

33:03Yeah, so I'm now renting, starting in a few weeks, a furnished home. Yeah. And I'm not going to own it. I'm bringing my clothes. Wow. Yeah, that's it. And I'm getting rid of everything. I don't want any of this stuff. Okay, you mentioned Scott Galloway earlier. I messaged you when I saw the clip, but I was very struck by you had him on my first million and you guys were talking about money. Dude, that clip went viral and I got made fun of so much in the comments that I think they missed the point. Well, I want to hear the point because I thought it was, I've known you a while and I thought it was very vulnerable and real, if not rather unrelatable for probably 99.9 % of the population.

33:43But basically he was asking you, you'd sold your first company and how much you'd made and it seemed like you were ashamed to say that you made only 20 million dollars i wasn't ashamed so let's let's recreate the clip so scott galloway um i'm a huge fan of scott's yeah he's great wildly successful yeah on the podcast somehow well it always comes this way because it's called my first million we talked about money yeah and he was like basically i'm he said i'm he's worth over nine figures so he's like i have 100 million plus liquid yeah and i was like That's wild. How much do you spend per month?

34:17And he's like, sometimes$400 ,000 a month. Wow. And I was like, that's intense. That's insane. That's wild. That's stressful. And then he goes, all right, I'm sitting here telling you everything. You tell me. What about you? I didn't tell him my net worth, but basically I had a company that I sold three years ago. And I walked away with around$20 million. Okay. And he asked me that, and I kind of choked up at first. And then I said the number. the clip has been seen millions and millions of times and everyone thought that i was ashamed i don't know if i was ashamed maybe so i guess the thing about making money and earning money is there's like crazy amounts of levels so someone may have saw my clip and they're like no way i'll ever have 20 but then i'm with a guy who's got 100 and then i've got friends i have billions and so maybe there was a little bit of like well i'm i'm on a good track like yeah you it's working out, not necessarily like I'm done.

35:13Yeah. It certainly doesn't feel that way. But it's like, oh, I'm on the right track. But also like he put me on the spot. And like I had like. No, you're talking real numbers instead of hypotheticals. So there's something I think inherently vulnerable about that. And then I could see someone being ashamed for the complete opposite reason also. Like they're self-conscious and they think money isn't something that you should talk about. Right. Like I could see someone being embarrassed for that reason also. But yeah, I took from your body language and your answer that you didn't feel like that was something you didn't feel like it was a lot like you need more.

35:51But you felt like comparatively that wasn't a big success. Well, I do feel that way. Yeah. I don't think I'm ashamed of that, though. but I do feel that way where I feel like that is a nice that's a that's a nice chapter in my journey and I and and there's more chat I have I'm gonna have more chapters and it's not necessarily the money it's just that we were talking about fitness yeah and we were talking about running I said I like goals it's fun it's fun I get a rush it's it's exciting for me to see progress in my life and it's nice it's nice having a goal to do more additionally my podcast it's a lot about money and i have like crazy successful people on yeah who are both successful in the traditional sense but also like they're happy i admire them whatever you've been on i admire you all these people i admire and a lot of people look up to me and they'll ask me questions or ask me for a photo and I'm like the fuck these guys are way cooler like they're the ones I like and so I get a little self-conscious about being considered a guru and things like that where it's like no I need to be I need to do what I'm talking about not someone who talks about it do you think uh there was part of you that wanted much much more and that's why it doesn't feel like no a lot to you no so originally I started my company I think the first real business that I started or the second one I I started when I was 24.

37:20My goal, I talked to a bunch of rich people, and they told me, the richest guy I talked to, he at the time was spending$100 ,000 a month or$80 ,000 a month. On the business or like personal? No, on his personal life. And I was like, that's so much money. That's insane amount of money. At the time, I was spending$3 ,000 a month in San Francisco. I was spending nothing. I lived for very cheap, and I was basically like pretty much almost poor. And he just said that number. And I was like, okay, well, what sum do I need to have that I could spend that if I wanted to and never run out of money for the rest of my life?

37:55And I came up with that number roughly$20 million. And so I said, by 30, I want to post-tax have that invested into index funds and bonds, like liquid money, not net worth, liquid money. Maybe I'll have other stuff, but that's what I want. And so I did it by 31. I sold the company when it was 31. And so I worked backwards. And so my company now is worth probably significantly more. Some of my competitors who I'm great friends with now, they're probably worth$2 to$250. And so do I regret selling? Not a chance. I had a goal. I'm happy I hit the goal. And I don't regret it. But I definitely want more.

38:32Not necessarily for the lifestyle, but partially because I'm just like, I didn't grow up with a lot. And I'm like always afraid of running out. Yeah. Even though I don't want to acquire nice things, I'm just crazy afraid. I think it's just like, it's a personality defect, but also because like, it's like bench pressing. Like I did 295. Let's see if I can get 300 in two or three weeks. Like, wouldn't that be exciting? Yeah. The paradox of whatever the attitude that makes someone good at growing and achieving, right. The ability to look back and see what you could have done better and to primarily focus on how you could have done more or better, that's obviously a propulsive force.

39:15Yeah, and there's downsides. Yeah, the downside is that it makes it hard to enjoy or appreciate because you're doing that even when you have so surpassed whatever the mark was. Like I wanted to write one book. I thought if I could write one book, that would be success. That would make you an author. I would look at it. It would be, you know, and then I did that at 25. And then I somehow did it like literally every year since then. And well past whatever the economic need to do that thing. So that's not what's driving me. I felt like each time I'd said everything that I needed to say. But then, yeah, there's just this part of you that just keeps going and going.

39:55And you are who I look up to you because you're like, you're a wise man. Like you're a wise person. Like you, like I read all of your old blog posts, the stuff that used to be on Thought Catalog. like i've read off everything okay i watch the daily stoic i consume all your i text you all the time like dude this video was really good i love this video my takeaway was like i actually consume all your stuff i admire you thank you um but and even you are like it'd be nice to be better he'd be nice to be more more and more and so i accept that that's like a natural part of just like i think everyone particularly people who are self-starters of which i i self-identify as so i just think it's just like it comes with the territory like for example last night yeah i spent an hour cleaning this thing and putting it on facebook marketplace and i sold it for four hundred dollars a i loved it like it felt awesome like to get what was it a cabinet okay like a workbench because you're because you're moving well i'm downsizing yeah and i'm gonna move but like i get or like i had an old xbox that i didn't even know i had i got 100 bucks for it someone's coming tonight and like i get joy out of that like that a brings me uh uh joy but B, there is like a fear of like losing.

41:04And so I'm like, oh, I can't just throw this away. I need this. I can't have waste. And I think that that just comes from, I don't know what it comes from, but it's the same personality type or it's the same personality trait of like, this is the numbers that the business did this month. We got to increase that by 20 % next month. Here's how. Yeah, there is this kind of, I don't want to, trauma sounds like a strong word, but I was listening to - No, I think it's trauma. I was listening to Ramit's podcast a couple of months ago and he was talking to this couple that was very cheap. and they were trying to trace back like why they became cheap and the guy sort of traces it back to his grandmother who like survived the depression and so whenever he would visit as a kid you know and she would hear that he like saved up his money and bought this toy or bought a piece of candy she would like shouldn't do that you never know where it's gonna come you know when you're gonna lose it you know or whatever and he was talking about how that's sort of this curse that he and his wife have like born their whole life and then ramit goes and how would you feel like if your daughter was that way and you would think that he would go like well the whole point of being successful would be to like break this generational trauma and to free my daughter from this sort of sense of scarcity about money and finance and then immediately the guy's like well you know it's been And like he's immediately going like, but it served me so well.

42:22I have to like pass it on. And so he couldn't see that like his grandmother had like effectively abused him or his parents. And then his parents had abused him. And now he was abusing his daughter, even though they had millions of dollars. You know, they were like sweating over like, you know, who picks up the tab at dinner or something or whether they could afford to like go on this small family vacation. And Ramit criticizes me for this all the time. Of course. No, and I do think that one of the, again, this is a first world problem compared to so many other problems, but like whatever was a large amount of money to your parents becomes like a baseline for you, right?

43:04And so one of the tricky things that comes along with succeeding financially or even just existing in a new world where things – the market is different and money is worth different amounts is to be able to look objectively at amounts and see money as it is, not whatever lens your parents made you think about it, especially when you've like so blown past that. And I think you see that when you ask someone like, what's an amount of money that you sweat? And someone will be like, oh, I wouldn't want my wife to spend more than$200. I think I don't have a number generally. It's like different things, which is kind of the problem.

43:50Like you should be able to get to a place where you don't think about anything below this number. Yeah, it's like you could be like, what's your hourly rate? And is it worth that hourly rate? For me, if I see like clothing, if I see like a disposable good that's like above a thousand, I'm like, do I really want that? Like when I sit down to eat, I don't like think about how much this stuff is on the menu. I don't do that for food. But then like if I find out like, I don't like I just sometimes I just go like, did they overcharge me on this thing? Like like for some other bill for like the same amount of money.

44:21Do you know what I mean? Well, I'm paranoid about being taken advantage of. And that's one of the reasons why I got nervous when Scott asked me that. Really? Yeah, I'm paranoid about being taken advantage of. I feel like I get taken advantage of. So you thought he would say like, oh, you should have sold the company for a lot more money? No, about just vultures asking for stuff. Oh, you thought by giving the number, you were making yourself vulnerable to be taken advantage of. Yeah, like I'm very nervous about that. Yeah, I get quite nervous about that. And I'm like, for example, I have a ranch as well.

44:48And if like I've got, like let's say I have a Tesla at the ranch when I have a vendor coming over to fix my driveway, like I'm like, I've got to hide the car. Really? Yeah, I'm like quite nervous about that. There's a story about Epictetus. He's at his house one day and he's like in another room and he hears like rustling and he comes in and this slave who sort of clawed his way up from nothing, that's what Epictetus, he has this shrine in his house and he sees a man is stealing a lamp from the silver lamp from his shrine to the gods and running out. And Epictetus is like distraught at first and then he goes, you know what?

45:26No, I'm being foolish. he says you can only lose what you have and he says tomorrow i will go and buy an earthenware lamp and he buys a cheaper lamp he's like i shouldn't have anything that i'm afraid of being stolen um and i think about that sometimes like the thing like i'm purchasing the nice thing but i'm also purchasing the worry or the stress the way that i've raised ability to other people what i phrase what i what i'm really trying to do is i own my things they don't own me yes because I remember like being a kid and like we dented the car playing hockey. My dad flipped. Yes. And I'm like, I don't ever want to be like that.

46:00Yeah. I won't flip. I own it. And so I really work hard to do that. Have you heard, have you read the book? The Courage to be Disliked. Uh-huh. So it's like a set in Japan. It's supposed, I think it's a nonfiction book. Yeah. But it's about, is it Arthur? Is it Kant? Kant. Kant. Kant. So, you know, he's one of the big four, like big psychologists, whatever. and the takeaway from that book was basically like you you choose to be anxious a little bit yes and you self-identify as an anxious person therefore you will continue to be anxious and when people talk about this stuff with where at least when i talked to ramit about this he's like dude you're being a tightwad because you are self-identifying as a tightwad and you're going to continue perpetuating that particularly with your children with your wife with the rest of your family because you have self-identified that and it's and it's not particularly easy to not self-identify that.

46:51His point is actually the reason it's so hard to not be cheap is that most people who are cheap think it is a virtue and not a vice. Correct. He's like, you are taking pride in this stupid thing. And I believe him to be right. I believe he's right. But that's a hard thing to overcome. But I believe that that mentality is correct. No, the ability to adjust what that amount of money is relative to your net worth is work, right? So when you were young and struggling to save up$1 ,000 to put it in the stock market or whatever, you were so proud of that and you should have been proud of it. And then as you get older, that number has to be 10 ,000.

47:31And then if you get to 100 ,000, then you hear about, I don't know, some billionaire makes a$100 million bet on something. That seems like a lot of money and it is to you, but to them, it's relative to their net worth a reasonable amount of money with the certainty they have about the vet or the potential upside they have about the vet. And so to be able to adjust as you grow what is reasonable or unreasonable is really important. Otherwise, it's like you were an animal in one size cage, and now you're in a bigger cage, but you're only pacing like this little outer bound, and you don't understand that you have a lot more space or freedom.

48:13And it seems foolish to be artificially constrained. Well, what I told my wife yesterday was like, my personal philosophy and my personal operating system is not scaling with some of my success or some of the demands that people have of me or whatever. And that's actually a pretty significant failure that needs to be addressed. And you learn it. Really, you learn a lot of these lessons as a business before you learn them personally. So like as a business, you go, well, I could do all this myself, but I need businesses hire people. So I'm going to hire someone. And then you understand, oh, when I hire people, it helps me make more money or it helps me scale what I'm doing.

48:53Or if I don't hire someone, all that money just goes to the government or whatever, right? You sort of, you're able because the business is not you. The business is this external thing. You go, hey, we need office space or I need this tool. or you're able to see... There's a much clearer ROI. Yes. And then in your personal life, you struggle to make some of those very same judgments, even though the same thing applies. What's that phrase? A penny poor pound. What is it? Oh, a penny wise pound foolish. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Do you and your wife track your spending and income? Do you have a meeting once a month or once a quarter or once a year?

49:33No. So do you just make decisions on like, oh, let's just do this? Yeah. really yeah um how do you how does that make you feel do you think that's i think uh i think some in some ways it's the right way in some ways it's not i think uh one one attitude i have maybe you disagree with this but i go like i'm not saying my way is the right no no i'm just saying like i try not to think that much about money right to me that's like like i think if you if you are thinking about money all the time you're not rich yeah i agree you know and so i try i i i try to be efficient. I try to do smart. I try not to be reckless, but I also try not to like, I don't know, obsess over everything in a spreadsheet or like some sort of interface with a graph.

50:18Like I, I just try to, I try to make good decisions. I try to set up systems that automate most of what I should be doing. I try to have just generally good habits, tastes, you know, practices. And then I try not to obsess that much about optimizing. I'd let, I'd rather focus on optimizing the things that I get a lot of meaning out of, which would be like my work, let's say, as opposed to, you know, my, my final financial picture. What I do is I just look at what my, like the fifth of the month, I'm like, all right, what was my income last year? Cause it's, I've got a variety of sources and I'm like, well, how do we do whatever?

50:56And then I say, um, like, well, we'll like say like, all right, what, what do we want to be in five or 10 years? like let's try to average roughly this per month and spend and i don't actually care entirely where the money goes i'm just saying like ballpark this is what like hey we we're way under this month if like just so you know like yeah if you want like you don't have to you know you could splurge do you think a month is too small of a unit of measurement for what no much larger bigger picture i think it's annual i think of it an annual but like i'll just like like i don't have categories set up on my budget i'm just like our spend we spent this much money this month uh i'm just like all right that's interesting that's cool i'm like wait what was this two thousand dollar purchase here like oh shit we forgot to cancel this thing yes so you that's usually why i look at it i'm like oh i forgot to do this thing or um whatever like just admin shit like that but it's just like generally this is how much i know we're gonna spend if we go over that's no big deal if we are way under i'll be like hey you know like we're not spending nearly enough that we said we wanted to spend do you want any like services like is there like would you would the cleaning lady coming every two days make you happy like yeah what would make you happy sure and so i try to be like conscientious of like what makes me happy and like go spend more on that yeah i think i think one of the things i've found with the business that's been helpful is like okay you understand there's certain like just costs associated with the business and you pay them There's taxes associated with the business.

52:26You pay them. You or other people make mistakes in the business and you just have to pay that, right? There's breakage. Stuff gets stolen. There's just things that you eat. But in your personal life, I think because it's a business, you go, that's business. I don't control that. But then in your personal life, people think they have much more control over it than they do. and so each one of those things that they have to eat goes down much more painfully whereas if you can treat your life a little bit more like a business you uh you won't sweat every one of those things like Seneca says you you pay the taxes of life gladly uh I don't think he meant just like the taxes you pay the government I think he just meant like there's a cost associated with all the things in life but I think we have this fantasy of control or of getting it perfect and that makes us anxious and stressed out about a bunch of things that if you just sort of shrugged your shoulders to not only would you be happier in the end your final like sort of picture would probably be exactly the same as it was if you were sweating it have you heard of um the company nerd wallet yeah so it's like a credit card uh yeah review website i uh was buddies with the founder tim and jake the two guys who started it i think it's publicly traded now at like a one and a half billion dollar valuation it's like a huge great company whatever i'm he um advised the hustle when i first started he gave me a lot of advice and uh he was a small investor and i remember when our business hit 100 grand per month in expenses i think we were making 150 000 in revenue or something like that yeah and i went to him i go tim i'm so stressed like look at my spreadsheet like uh we're spending 100 grand a month sometimes i don't even know like what we're spending on and he's like yeah but you made 150 he's like let's try to like what can we do to make you spend 200 and yeah and then now you'll make 300 like yes and i was like wait what doesn't that like stress you out he goes no dude it's just a number on a spreadsheet and i'm an investor he's like as ceo like i'm just investing capital into things that can turn to more so like if i have a machine that turns one dollar into a dollar fifty i want to spend all of my money into that machine yes and he had that talk with me i know i was like 25 trying to figure this out and i like my mind was blown.

54:43I was like, you're right. It's just with the business, it's way easier. You know, it's just like, there's an input and then you have to build a machine that has the output that's higher than the input. And that's actually kind of easy to do, or rather it's simple to do. Yes.

55:01Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields.

55:41and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that.

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57:03That's where we got a bunch of our Christmas decorations and a bunch of essentials because we have some of my wife's family visiting us for the holidays. Blankets, linens, all that kind of stuff. You can get all of it at Wayfair. You can also get big stuff like sofas and dining tables, beds, desks, and more, all shipped for free. They don't have huge delivery fees for furniture. Find all your must-haves from furniture and decor to appliances and cookware all in one convenient place. get last minute hosting essentials gifts for all your loved ones and decor to celebrate the holidays for way less head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com wayfair every style every home but it's kind of a bedrock assumption that you either get and that allows you to make things that grow and scale or that so challenges your sort of uh scarcity mindset or like whole you know desire to control things that you're you're just like not cut out for business or risk yeah and that like totally changed my perspective like spend more like spend more profitably rather yeah uh and that like was kind of a paradigm shifting moment that he had uh with me yeah it's like you you want to keep costs low but when your costs were lower you almost certainly were making less money as a business yeah so i was like spend more and because he's like no you're not spending you're investing invest more yeah oh my god i think for a long time i had this impediment i just didn't want to hire anyone i just didn't want any employees you have six i don't know way more it's probably like 15 uh maybe more i don't know but but i this is like for years this is more when i had the marketing company and and i think there was there was some good reasons for doing it like i i i i had this idea that if i had fixed costs then i would have to take on clients to pay for those fixed costs that i didn't actually want well yeah that's because an agency business sucks yes it does and and so it wasn't until i moved from an agency business which brass check was for a long time to making my own stuff which is when Brashjok started Daily Stoic and Daily Dad and the bookstore and other stuff, that it was like, oh, wait, I believe in all the stuff that I'm doing.

59:23And so the more I can grow, the more of that stuff I can do. I think Casey said that to me one time. Casey and I said - Does he have a team? He goes back and forth, I think. Sometimes he does. It depends on what he's working on. But he said something like, he's like, we don't do projects to make money. We make money to do more projects. And the idea of like, oh, okay, the more I can scale and the more I can bring in, the more stuff I can make. Because it's not free to make stuff. Yeah, he had this great thing about, he did this video about being a creator or something like that. And I think he had 100 million views before he turned AdSense on or whatever it's called on Google.

1:00:07He didn't monetize his videos. And he was like, I thought I was punk rock. I thought I was sick. I was doing fuck the man. I don't need this money. And he was like, that was so stupid of me because I couldn't afford to make videos. I had to go do all these side gigs in order to make money to continue making this awesome daily vlog. And then he's like, it's also selfish. I have a family. I should have been providing. I completely agree with that mentality of people who don't monetize certain things too early. I'm like, well, is your product good? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, do you want to keep doing it?

1:00:40Yeah. Then fucking charge money and make money so you can continue doing it. And also there's an arrogance in it, right? At some point in the future, you're going to want to keep doing stuff and people are going to be less interested in hearing from you and doing it, right? And at that point, you're going to be desperate for someone to pay you or support you or fund you, right? Yeah, you always got to get it while it's hot. So get it while it's hot. Like when people are paying you to make stuff or want to be a part of what you're doing, the idea where you're like, no, no, no, I want to keep it artificially small is, I think, silly.

1:01:09I think it's silly. Yeah, I get that. For what I do, I talk about ancient philosophy. So there's some people that think the idea of monetizing in any way or supporting it with ads or selling stuff, they just don't like it. And I get it. Maybe if I was on the outside, I would see it that way. And maybe I see it that way with things that I like. But what these people fail to realize is it's not free. It's not free to have the studio. It's not free to have this pocket like when you start when you don't have an audience all the even the online tools are free right but when you start to have a large audience they pay you to access that audience like it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to send like the daily stoic email who you're using convert kit yeah convert kit doesn't doesn't charge hundreds of thousands but it's a lot of money and but but it's a lot of money and then also i have to have someone edit them.

1:02:03There's a lot of management that goes in. If you're putting on a show for a million people every day, which is what the Daily Stoic email is by itself, you can't just do that from your bedroom and do it at a high level, right? It costs money. And so to be able to continue to do it and to be able to continue to accept new people into it, you have to be able to make money. And then what you find when you make money is that you can then go, okay, I'm going to keep a little of this to myself, like pay for my house or send my kids to school or whatever. And then I can reinvest the bulk of it into making more stuff that I give away for free.

1:02:44Is this going to turn into your business episode? What do you mean? We're going to do a business episode because I want to ask you a question. Go for it. I don't know if your listeners will like this. So we could move past if you don't like this. is the email newsletter potentially one of the greatest business models of all time it's insane because mine or all email newsletters no not all if you set them up the right way so at the hustle right now i i don't i've sold it so i don't have access we i think they have close to four million subscribers yes every day four million do you know how many people it takes to write that three yeah that's three people yeah now the reason i remember we had 30 or 40 employees when we sold because we had to monetize it.

1:03:24Then we had accounting and all this other stuff. But I don't remember the numbers. But I think, so let's say we were doing well over a million a month. I think we're going to do 20 million the year we sold. But let's just say for round numbers, we were doing a million a month and we sent 26 emails per day. So that's like, what is that? So 25 divided by, so that's like, is that what? 40 ,000 per time we hit send. And we had three people writing it. and it's a beautiful business model if you could nail it so you have a lot of people right uh so daily stoke is about a million people a day it's insane uh obviously we don't send 25 emails a day and no sorry we did 25 a month oh sorry 26 a month yeah so every that's every day but sunday i think yeah we send out every weekday and then there's there's some other but let's say we said it every single we said it more or less every single day now obviously it's less monetizable than email about business.

1:04:20It's a different audience because it's so it encompasses everyone, which is great. But then from a business standpoint, that's less great than these or these people. That's 25 million impressions or whatever it is. It's crazy. It's a lot. It depends how hard you want to work. It'd be you and an editor. Yeah. Yes. It's insane. It's a great business model. and I think I recognized that when I when my agent came to me with the idea for a book he said you should do this page a day book and I was excited about it for two reasons one I thought I could build something daily stoic yeah the daily stoic I thought okay I'll do the book but then what comes after the book I thought I would do it like I could just keep going it would be something that would allow me to write every day on sort of meditations about this thing every day but I also liked the idea that it wouldn't be me in the sense that I like the word I does not appear in Daily Stoic and in the emails the word I does not appear it's a it's depersonalized I still write them all sometimes I I like my editor will help me here or there I can have someone sort of put together the bones of one for me so it's scalable a little bit but it's I I'm not it's not like what does Ryan have to say to it let me tell you something about my life right Which, as you write as yourself, it's much harder because it's personal.

1:05:47But the idea of just having this thing that goes out every day and just the sort of practice of doing it every day has been amazing. And then, yeah, it's a great business because you are creating – you are talking to people every day. And then you get to say, while I have you, let me tell you about this other thing. whether it's a sponsor or whether it's one of my books or there's something that like i just think is cool and should exist and so versus your thought catalog days you some were massive hits yes probably most were not massive hits yes that's like the rule of virality is like are you writing to subscribers uh which is a base or are you writing for an indetermined unknown audience that you hope you will reach person by person.

1:06:35And you can just write better when you are writing to an audience. That's crazy you have a million people. That's so much. I mean, what happened was I sent out an email to my email list then, just as me, Ryan. And I think about 9 ,000 or 10 ,000 people signed up. This would have been the summer of 2016. And so now, eight years later, it's about a million people. is it all organic uh like you mean have we done ads for it uh maybe here or there like the occasional like the gen thing where you're trying to convert people who are following you on another platform but no no i was looking at our spending uh i was looking at when i sold the company i was looking at the numbers i think we had spent four hundred thousand dollars the month before we sold on growing the email list yeah that's crazy it's insane that's crazy this is this is just word about something that really on its face is laughable that there is word of mouth for yeah it's insane but that's why it's awesome yeah it's great i love it it's the coolest thing and then obviously we started it with the daily dad which is like the second one um you write that one too i do both i just write a couple like i wrote one daily stoic email today i think i did a daily stoic and a daily dad email yesterday and i just yeah i just chip away at it so i i think we're right now we're like three months ahead for daily stock maybe two months ahead for daily so our newsletter was news so there is no you don't get it you don't get ahead and so it was every night you got to do it it was really hard i did it for the first little while it was very hard so you made 20 million dollars what did that change for you uh i had less of a chip on my shoulder i felt like i could be a badass business operator and i still feel like i'm not quite there yet but I'm I had some um I had some um it made it was like just my parents would be like shouldn't you be working today and like when I'm home on Christmas break because I'm on my phone I'm like yeah dog I am working and like just getting like a Wall Street Journal headline it's like see I told you like this is real did you feel like that's who you were trying to prove it to yeah for sure and like every ex high school girlfriend like yeah yeah like you know like people like try to tell you not to be like you probably say this all the time like don't have rage and like forgive people and i'm like i don't know it's kind of awesome fuel like to like improve yourself like the problem is it's hard to turn off yeah and so there's massive downside but i'm but i i would never deny someone that it's like it can be very productive but did it did it so it got you there but did you feel like when you did it that you had proved it because because well it's not binary it's not binary so it was like all right i'm on to something like Like I'm getting closer to having a seat at the big boys table.

1:09:21Like I can, some people might take me a little bit more seriously now. Like I have some type of evidence that I'm good at my job and I'm talented at the trade that I'm trying to master. Which is business. Which is business. You know, I read Mastery, Robert Greene, it changed my life. And that's why I purposely use those words of trade and mastery. I remember reading that book. It blew my mind away or blew my mind. And so did it, yeah, so it felt some type of like a sense of, all right, I'm decent at this gig. And it does bring a massive amount of relief. Like, dude, being poor sucks. Like, I paid myself, so I sold, I think, in year four.

1:09:59In year one, I paid myself 20 grand a year. Year two, 20 grand a year. Year three, I think it was 50. And then year four, I did pay myself a lot, like half a million. And because the business was doing good. and um but like for those first like two or three years in san francisco i was on obamacare because i was like under the limit of like i i didn't have a lot of money and so that shit drags you down and so the people who say money doesn't make you happy it definitely makes you happier yes um and so there was a sense of like all right this whole thing that i've spent a lot a lot of time and effort on like it's given me some sense of security and like because like if gmail made a change i'm done right you know what i mean like and so that felt that was very high stress so i did feel a significant amount of relief the big boys table that you mentioned i think that that's interesting because i think a lot of people are like i want to get into the club right whatever i want to be one of the guys a lot of these are male metaphors of course uh because that's unfortunately what business is sort of there's there it's actually indicative right because there's this kind of like uh immature dude energy to it yeah i think it's a lot of rooted in just like high school being bullied and yes totally uh but there is this sense that you'll arrive at some point you'll get it at some point you'll be accepted at some point you'll have proved it at some point do you feel like that is real no no no no no arriving is not real yeah maybe getting closer to that ever-changing destination is closer or is is reality but no arriving is not the reality i like i still have massive insecurity i think the the difference is is that i understand that having the insecure feelings is very normal so i used to the hustle there was a daily newsletter we also hosted these huge events so i don't know if you ever spoke to one but we'd have people like you or we would have like the founders of the largest companies startups like in the world so i remember i was backstage age one time and i was with miguel the found the guy who started we work and back then we thought we worked he worked at american apparel for a while yeah and i thought and he's a great guy when i hung out with him it sucks that he it was weird that's a weird it was a really weird combo but and this is back then when we worked i actually thought it was a 50 billion dollar company there was this woman who started away like the suitcase business casper mattresses casey nice that was there one time and then like there was like another billionaire there and i remember they were complaining one guy who had a multi-billion dollar company he was like because what i would do is i would tell people you talk at one you got to be here at 11 for sound check there's no sound check at a conference like i just wanted to hang out with them backstage so i would tell them you got to arrive two hours early and we would all be in this room about this size with couches and i wouldn't say shit i would just listen and i was like dude i get to hang out with all these ballers is awesome and they all fucking complained they all complain about one guy was like um and it wasn't bad complaining but it was like um i gotta fire this person that has worked but he's i've had to fire him for a year but i'm afraid of the confrontation yeah or this other person was just in the new york times for this hundred million dollar raise and they're like i don't know if we're gonna figure this out yeah and it was just all a bunch of people complaining and at that moment it felt as though i had bad eyesight and i was able to put eyeglasses on where it's like oh it's it's awesome that i can be insecure and good at my job and succeed and And that made me feel so good.

1:13:14I remember there was this one guy named Sam Yegan. Sam Yegan started OkCupid, and then he was the CEO of Match. I think it's Match. It's a publicly traded company. And then there was Payall. Payall started ClassPass. Okay. And I remember they were both so nervous to speak. We had like 3 ,000 people there. And I was like, you guys have 3 ,000 people at your company. Why are you nervous? And they were just really nervous. And I was like, hey, you want some water? And I remember Sam kind of snapped at me. And I was like, dude, I'm here to help you. I'm going to calm me down. We got this. We can do this.

1:13:43And I just remember feeling so relief, so much relief that these people who I admired so greatly were nervous to talk in front of people, were afraid of confrontation, felt insecure. And I remember like, so that moment and then selling and realizing I'm no different. All of that stuff, I was like, it's so awesome and relieving that I can have insecurities, I can have flaws and still succeed and hit my goals or whatever. Like insecurity won't go away.

1:14:26Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.

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