Built for Growth with Miesha Tate: James Altucher on Ideas, Obsession, and Fulfillment

24:57So I want to share something with you and maybe it pertains to this and maybe it doesn't, but I took my daughter and my son out of traditional school, although she only went one year. She went to an academy of public school and I just didn't love it. I was like, I just want better. I don't like the conformity. I don't like the way that, you know, I don't like it. I don't like the sit down, shut up, don't move your body. As I say, I don't, I just don't like it. I don't like the way that it was so stressful. She was in kindergarten and we would have like hours of homework. I'm like, what is going on?

25:25Like, what are we trying to accomplish here? If you can't take my child for six or seven hours a day at five or six and accomplish what you need during that time, you have to take my family time away from us and stress us out and make her cry because she's got to finish this stuff and know these sight words and memorize all this stuff that she, she's not going to, you know, the memorization was so stupid to me. I'm like, this is not learning. This is like forced programming that just isn't going to stick anyway. So we're wasting our time. So we pulled her out. I put her in the school Apogee and there's no formal testing.

25:58It's learner driven. And I got nervous a little bit, like this last, I would say few months where I'm like, she just turned seven and she doesn't write and read at what you would think a seven-year-old should. My daughter's brilliant. She's so creative. I could just go on and on. Like she took this, she'll take boxes at her house and she'll make these dollhouses out of them, places. She'll take a hot glue gun. She put a refrigerator in there with another box. She took an old handle and she glued it to it so you could like open it up. I mean, she's just got this amazing creative mind that I think blows most kids out of the water.

26:42But we encourage that. We want her to do that. that's why I put her in the school. Anyways, I got a little stressed because it's like, you know, Amaya, sing your ABCs. And she couldn't recall them, her ABCs. And I'm like, oh my God, like, did I make, you know, did I make a mistake? She didn't know her ABCs. She's seven. And she writes her letters backwards sometimes, you know, and I'm like, is this like, what's going on here? And she's not like reading the books that, you know, like kids at seven, when you look it up online, says they should be able to read these books. Okay. I'll get to the point.

27:14I met with the founder, not founder, but owner of the Apogee here. And she said, look, our philosophy at Apogee is that in their own time. She said, they will get there. There's no kid that I know of with two parents in a household that are loving, that are providing all the things that you are, that read to them every night that are going to be illiterate. Yeah. Like, do you know anybody at all who doesn't know how to read? Yeah. I mean, basically, no. So she's going to learn how to read. Yes. You know, it's just like I had again fallen into that mindset of like that standardization of like she should know this.

27:50But I'm like, well, okay, if it comes to her at eight and then she's on fire with it and she realizes she can get this information from the books and this, as opposed to like forcing her to do the things that are, you know, what we think is how we measure a seven-year-old and what should be expected of them. And I was like, that's the whole reason that I put her in an unschooling place is so that she wouldn't have to do that. But then even I got like, I got just like sucked into the idea that, you know, she has to meet these standards. I mean, first off, I'm jealous of what you're doing with her now because I wish my parents had done that with me.

28:23Like school, think about it. School is awful, right? Like remember when you were in school? Like having a B someplace every 42 minutes and then you get three minutes to switch to the next room. And like you say, then you're just sitting. I don't remember anything. I can't remember anything I've learned. Like, I've asked this question to a lot of people, and even though what I'm about to ask you, I've asked literally hundreds of times to people, I'm not gonna, I can't even remember the answer. When was Charlemagne, the emperor, born? I, right now, can't remember, even though I've asked this a million times to people.

28:58It's something we learned, we've read entire books about maybe, or chapters about in social studies. I can't remember anything. I don't know any calculus. I don't know how to cut up a frog. Can't do anything. I can't do anything that we learned in school. Like, what was it all for? And they say, well, it was to make friends. You're going to make, they're going to make friends. Your daughter's making friends, right? So there's no reason for the way that the current educational system is. It's entirely awful. No, the fact that we haven't updated it is silly to me. And it just makes me think it's more of a business.

29:30You know, we know now that children learn best through play. That's for sure. If you want a child to learn something, make a game out of it. They'll do it. They'll learn it. Yeah, because then you start to trigger into that flow state when people play in a game. You trigger that obsessive feeling that people become even temporarily, I want to win. And that's a little bit of a mini obsession. And then think about college because it just extends into college. It's just 18 to 22-year-olds, people feel they're not quite ready to go out. They just need some way to just extract money from them. Like, think about it.

30:07Do you know, college tuitions have gone up faster than inflation, not on average, but every year, every single year since 1965, college tuitions have gone up faster than inflation because that's when the government started backing student loans. So college presidents, they always get paid, but the student's the one who has to have the debt and you can't get rid of the debt in bankruptcy. And so it's just this entire marketing scam like, oh, we need to, everybody needs to go to college. So we're going to pay for everyone's college. The government gets the interest payments. So they make money. Everyone loses.

30:40I mean, everyone wins except the student who loses. And then I - 17 or 18 years old is supposed to know what they're putting all this money towards of what they want to do in their future with zero life experience outside of their parents' home. Even biologically, the part of the brain that handles risk the best isn't fully developed until you're about 25. So you're asking a kid to take on maybe$200 ,000 in debt or more. Oh, no problem. I'm not going to just pay it back doing whatever. They're never going to pay it back for their entire lives, it turns out. Like they're all these, this entire generation of kids going to college is really in trouble.

31:13And so don't send your kids to college either. No, I'm not. I can't wait to get into that with you actually a little bit. I love your stance on college and kind of the anti-college thought process that you have. Or at least I think you're more opportunistic. I don't think you're necessarily anti-college. I'm sure there's a place for it in some situations. but you are opportunistic and like, well, bang for buck, right? Yeah, and think about all the things somebody could do instead of college. When you think of it that way, there are so many exciting things you could do. You could go work on a farm.

31:47You could go do computer programming at some AI company if that's what you're interested in. You could write a book about whatever it is you're fascinated about, whatever it is you're interested in. you could travel, not just travel for the sake of it. You know, I just spoke with someone who's sending his kid to a cooking school in Italy for three months instead of going to their first semester of college. One of my daughters, we had her take off a year, don't do the first year of college, take race car driving lessons. And what a great experience for her. And, you know, these things you would never do if you were stuck in that track, like, oh, I got to go to college and then business school and then work at a bank and blah, blah, blah.

32:31Like it's, have a boring life. Yeah, you miss out on that opportunity for that life experience that might actually provide some, a better guide, even if you did want to go to school, but be a better guide of what you actually want to do. Because I don't know how many people I know, but it's a lot that have graduated from college that don't use their degree. Of course not. Like I can't, okay, I'll just tell you real quickly my story. I majored undergrad in computer science, loved it, went to graduate school for computer science, was thrown out, but still learned a lot. And then at my first real job in the adult world, I was so bad at computer programming, they had to send me to remedial classes to be a computer programmer.

33:17And so I couldn't even use anything I learned in college. And then now, of course, I haven't done any programming in decades. So I don't want to say, was completely useless. I hope I spent my time a little bit effectively, but in terms of what I was supposed to learn, it just didn't happen. There's this viral video going around about this young woman bawling her eyes out about her school debt. She went to college and she's been paying on this debt for the last five years. And because the interest rate is at like 17%, she owes more now. She's been making like$1 ,500 payments every month. She owes more now than she did when she graduated.

33:57Yeah, and you can't, if you declare bankruptcy, that's the one debt it does not get rid of. You cannot get rid of that debt. So it's really, it really is a scam. And by the way, why, you know, college instead of trade school? Trade school, you learn skills, skills that make you money. And by the way, read a book if you want to learn other things. Or there's so many amazing courses and online places to learn things. you know but instead there's this whole marketing thing because the again the government makes money on that 17 interest so the government borrows money at three percent and then they lend it out at 17 to your kids and it's just a scam like it's like a ponzi scheme yeah i would say i don't know if at 17 i could have made a good decision about um you know taking a loan at 17 i mean you just don't have the perspective and it just it it's really kind of heartbreaking and i'm not at all interested in my kids going to college i'll just say this i'm already starting them on that whole different trajectory you know they this school um is based on socrates and the socratic method and they debate every day and they learn how to have arguments respectfully and disagree respectfully and then also take in new information and change their mind if they want to because i feel like that is a pillar of intelligence i used to be like you know what i never thought of it that way and And now that I know something that I didn't know before, I can change my mind.

35:24Yeah. And so often they're used to just being like, okay, here's all the facts. Here's a test on the facts. There's a little bit of what's your opinion, but don't have the wrong opinion. And then we're on to the next topic. So you're right. People don't really learn how to... Critical thinking is... I mean, let's say you want to start a business eventually, or you think you or your child or whatever might want to start a business. in order to start a business, you have to do something that everybody right now thinks is wrong because otherwise somebody else would have started this business. So you have to be able to stand for your convictions and do something that the entire world says you're an idiot for doing because all the best entrepreneurs, they have done that at some point.

36:09And even if you're setting up a laundromat on the corner of these two busy streets. No one put a laundromat there before. Everyone thought it was a stupid idea. You have to do it to make it happen. I'm very much a jump and expect the net to appear kind of person. And sometimes it doesn't appear and I fall. And then I have to say, well, that was a learning experience and now I'm going to jump again and I'm going to expect the net to appear this time. And I just keep doing it. And some people think that I'm insane. It's like, why would you take that risk without this amount of forethought? And it's not that I don't have any forethought, but this is a question I had for you.

36:48And I wonder if this is similar or if it's different and how you would recommend that somebody prepare, because not every jump is a great idea. But for example, I am that kind of like passion pursuit kind of person. And if it feels right, nine times out of 10, I'm just gonna do it. And then whatever is wrong with it, I will just figure out how to fix. And on the other side, like my fiance, who is a great balance to me, is very much about like, dot the I's, cross the T's. Like, let's make sure we've really thought this through and let's not do any hasty jumps unless we have a really good, you know, understanding and like everything kind of checks out and it all makes logical sense.

37:31And I'm like, I don't know how to explain to him always that sometimes things just for me don't make logical sense, but they make sense like in my heart and in my mind. And I don't know if that's a good enough reason for some people. And so I wonder too, for you as somebody who has just, you have these, you know, many different ventures that you've done. Like what was it for you that, or what is it for you that lets you decide if an idea is a good one or it's not a worthwhile pursuit? I think there's no way to know. I think you have to just do it. And by the way, it might still be a bad idea, but if you love doing it, you keep doing it until...

38:13So that's what it is. Yeah. You have to... Okay, I'll give you kind of an example. It has nothing to do with business. But one time, a friend of mine and I, we both love stand-up comedy, but we were too afraid to do stand-up comedy. It's a scary thing. And so we challenged each other to do it. We rented out a hall even, invited everyone we knew. We were saying this on a podcast, so everybody listening to our podcast came. And we did seven minutes of stand-up comedy each. And it was the scariest thing. I really thought I was outside the building. I really thought I was just going to let my friend do it, and I was going to hide away someplace.

38:50It was so scary. But then once I did it, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do this every single day for the rest of my life. Like I love doing this. And so I loved it. And I was horrible. It was a really bad idea for me. But I did it and I did it. I did it every single day. I found comedy clubs that would put me up because I had a little bit of an audience. And then I made the stupid mistake of buying a comedy club just so I could force myself on the stage to do it every day. And I don't care. People actually hated me for doing that. Other comedians, but whatever. And I was really, really bad.

39:26Why did they hate you for doing that? Because, oh, look, he used his money to get on stage. Okay. They didn't know that just a year earlier I'd been broke and, you know, I earned every dollar and this is what I wanted to do. But I was really bad. And I didn't really actually know that I was so bad as I was. I knew I wasn't getting better. I would say finally, after years, I got good enough that other clubs from around the country would ask me. I toured a little bit. I went to other countries where they asked me to go. So I got okay. I never got like great, great. I just got good enough to pass.

40:01And, but I love doing it. Was it a good idea for my life? I don't know. Was it a good idea? Did it make me money? No, it completely sidetracked me from making money for like five or six years. And I didn't build anything else in my career. But like, what's a career really? At the end of your life, you're not a career. You're kind of a collection of all your experiences and all the people you've been in touch with and had contact with and all the things you've learned. And by loving different things, I got immersed in different subcultures and met people from all walks of life that wouldn't know me if I hadn't, if I had just stuck to one subculture.

40:38So like for you, obviously the ultimate fighting culture and you were completely immersed in that. Now it's podcasting and other things. and that's how you really build life experience. Not by being an accountant somewhere. Oh, by the way, I love my accountant. Some people love that. But I did something that was probably a bad idea by most metrics, but I love doing it. And do I regret it? Not at all. It's changed so many parts of my life having those extra skills that I can now bring into other things. So at the end of the day, if you love something and you are disciplined about pursuing it, then, and you do all sorts of experiments around what you love, so you get to really try it and try it out, you're going to be a better person for it.

41:30And the people around you will be better for it. Imagine your kids. And if they saw you doing something that every day, oh, there's office politics, you get home, you complain about your boss or your coworkers, and they see that every day. That's really what they're learning from. or they see you challenging the hardest things you could possibly be doing and really pursuing the things you love. And they see your happiness when it works out and they see you learning when it doesn't work out. Which is more valuable for them? Obviously, it's you doing what you love is what's more valuable for them.

42:18This October, Fear is Free on Pluto TV. With horror movie collections from Paranormal Activity, The Ring. You will die in seven days. Scream. And From Dusk Till Dawn. This is my kind of place. And don't miss the man-made nightmares in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Or the world ending chaos in 28 Days Later. There's something in the blood. All the scares, all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. How do you get secure with the financial part of it? You have kids and you have people like depending on you, right? For, you know, to provide a roof over their house, right? Over their head. Some people might say, well, that's easy to say.

43:05It's easy for you to say. It's easy for me to say. Yeah. I've got to earn a paycheck. Yeah. And I've, you know, So I've had to deal with that all along too, particularly during the periods where I decided to focus on things that didn't make as much money. But also I would diversify my interests enough that at least there would be one interest where I could build that as either an income stream or a business that I could sell or something. So even during this period where I was doing comedy, I would spend a little time, probably would have been much bigger if I spent more time, But I have a background in finance.

43:43I used to run an edge fund. So I would write financial newsletters. It was a subscription service. Investing is something that I was at different points obsessed with. So I had that skill. I had that knowledge. And I did have an income stream from that. And it was doing well. I was building wealth from that. And it didn't have... It would have been much bigger if that's all I did. If I had been obsessed with that at that point, I would have built it much bigger. But it was good enough. Okay. You're right. You have to think about that somewhat, but I'm not going to say like, oh, okay, I got wealthy.

44:18And then there was one point I had wealth. I was doing things I was interested in. And then, I don't know, the IRS called one year, five years earlier, I had forgotten to pay and they took all my money. And so I had to start from scratch while I was pursuing things I was interested in. What was that like, by the way, like emotionally, mentally? By that point, I had made money and gotten broke enough. I sort of felt like, you know, there's three skills to money. There's making it, keeping it, growing it. And I realized at one point I was good at making it, not so good at keeping it and growing it.

44:56So I did have to focus on that a little bit. And I was scared, but I also knew I could survive. So I knew I'd be able to figure it out with the 10 ideas a day, I knew something would happen. Because when you write all those ideas a day down, things start to connect up and it's impossible not to be lucky. So luck plays an important role, but you create your own luck. But if you're writing 10 ideas a day down, it's like, oh, here's 10 ideas for Google. Here's 10 ideas for Twitter or Facebook. Like if I start coming up with ideas for other companies, eventually I send them to people. eventually people call back and things sort of happen and businesses start.

45:37Yeah. You know, one of the other ideas that I have on here was starting a homeschool, you know, slash business, but I look at the homeschool as a business. But with Apogee where my kids go, I want to open one up when we move to Boise and I want to have my own kids there and I want to have more kids there. And I, you know, we can, I think we have up to like 20. I don't want to run it as the guide is what they would call it, you know, the teacher. I want to be more in when I want to be an out when I want to be out kind of person so I can have a little bit you know of freedom but also be like hey kids come look the chickens are hatching you know or hey we're gonna do jujitsu today I'm gonna run it you know an hour where I'm gonna do the hour workout oh my god I wish I had been at this school instead of what I was at you know I want to be like hey kids we're gonna learn how to bake sourdough today like I'm gonna show you guys you know those kinds of things like I want to be able to come in and just create you know project and like have that planned or we're gonna build furniture we're gonna learn how to refinish furniture.

46:31That's what we're going to do. I'm going to go around, like me, this is how I see myself, go around to a bunch of garage sales or like go on Facebook Marketplace and find all the ones that are free. You know, people just don't want any more. You can drive by the site and collect 20 pieces of furniture and then have these kids just make it into something amazing and see how their brains just, you know, create. And then they can take it home and put it in their homes as this beautiful piece of, you know, art. You should make like a whole curriculum. You can make 10 different curriculum for this type of, and then people could choose the track or just pick and choose which things they want to do.

47:01Like think about that, going to garage sales, buying furniture, then they have to learn to negotiate. They have to learn to value things. Like it's so many different skills in there that they never teach in school. So you should come up with all these different curriculum for that. That's one, you know, there's always different ways to slice an idea too. Maybe you don't want to start the school, but maybe you want to set up all the ideas and let other people do the school and using these curricula, or maybe you make a book about it, Or maybe we make a series of podcasts where each episode is a different part of the curriculum here, you know, like a homeschooling podcast.

47:36Or maybe we follow your kids around while they do these different things. That's a YouTube series. Yeah. Oh, see, I like where this goes. This is where I could just get so many ideas going at once that I'm almost like, you know, sometimes then I struggle with finding a direction of which one to go. Do you ever do that? Do you ever struggle in like, where am I going to like, I have 10 beautiful ideas out of this thousands. I've been thinking of. There's 10 I want to do. And sometimes I find myself getting a bit too dispersed in different areas. I'm not maximizing anyone. It's like 10 % on 10 different ideas, which isn't really effective or efficient either.

48:11Maybe not. I don't know. Like do all 10 and then see which ones fall through. That you want to exactly put more. You're not going to know until you do it. Like you can't know. It's just like, again, it's like, it's like mental health. It's like depression. You can't think your way out of being sad. You have to do things that occupy this mental real estate in our head. Otherwise, the sadness takes over. So you have to do things to know if an idea is good, if you're going to be happy doing it. Even business ideas, okay, if something doesn't grow after five, six, seven months, and you think you're putting all the right stuff into it, it's probably not going to grow.

48:53It's probably just not a good idea. It's okay to not have a good ideas. That's why, but you'll never know until you do it. You've debunked the thousand hours. Yeah. So the so-called 10 ,000 hour rule, where you have to do something for 10 ,000 hours to be great at it. Well, we hear this a lot in sports, by the way. They'll say it on the mat, you've got to basically have 10 ,000 hours of doing double eggs, or you've got to have, you have to have rep this. It's a thousand times before you're even a beginner at it. There's this mentality that you've just got to repeatedly do this over and over and over and over again if you ever want to be good or great at it.

49:33This is always a constant debate. No one really knows the full answer. And maybe to be the best number one in the world, you would know more than I would. Maybe you do have to have those 10 ,000 hours. But it seems to me also, if you really experiment a lot, you could figure out something in faster than 10 ,000 hours. So I'll give you an example again from comedy, but I have tons of examples. So it was harder for me, as I mentioned, it was hard necessarily in the beginning to get on stage. Particularly in New York City, there's 5 ,000 comedians, there's only so many comedy clubs. So one time I did an experiment.

50:14What if I treated a subway car like a stage? So I went on the New York City subway and I brought someone with me to videotape. And I thought I was gonna, once I got there, I was too scared. I said, forget it, we're not gonna do this. But then I said, just turn on the video camera and we'll see. And then I started doing comedy from subway car to subway car for the next several hours. And it was just an experiment. And it's a hostile audience and it's a very quick audience. You have to make them laugh very quickly or they're gonna hate you. and it was just an experiment. And I got such valuable experience and knowledge and I was on stage like 30 times as opposed to waiting for 30 comedy clubs to let me perform there.

50:56So I kind of skipped this whole kind of branch of learning in order to, when I did this, when I did this little experiment. Sometimes experiments are a good way to kind of skip some of those 10 ,000 hours. like and I don't know the equivalent on in in fighting but you know it used to be if you were fighting I traditionally you would think of boxing but what about when when when there's not as many kind of boundaries and rules as boxing well what if you kind of get someone on the ground and break their fingers oh that turns out to be a shortcut for very quickly winning the fight right so that might have been an experiment at first I don't know but you don't necessarily need the 10 ,000 hours, if you could experiment enough and try things and see what works, you could really save yourself a lot of time as opposed to just learning the same things everyone else is learning over and over again.

51:48Well, I think what I could apply what you're saying to sport in a way, because there is this idea that there's not really a way to do it smarter. You've just got to do it enough. You've got to go do it over and over and over and you've got to learn through repetition. But let's say that I show up and on my first day, I learn a double leg and I'm told I need to spend 10 ,000 hours learning a double leg, right? To be great at it. But what if I experimented and said, okay, I'm going to learn that double leg and I'm going to do it, you know, 100 times every day and make sure that I understand the double leg.

52:26But then I'm just going to like wrestle and I'm going to see what move comes naturally the best to me. I'm going to experiment, right? And every time you go in a live situation, basically you're experimenting. You're seeing what works best for you. And then in that situation, you actually uncover the things that you are naturally gifted at, the things that you're the greatest at. And then you could take that thing and say, that's what I naturally excel at. So I'm not going to be in a box of like, okay, double egg or single egg or this or that. It's like, I actually have this hybrid move that I haven't really seen anybody else do.

53:02So nobody's really preparing for it. And I'm going to work on that over and over and over until I'm like so great at it. Nobody can stop me. Right. You'll be, so through an experiment, you really, you realized what kind of sub area of fighting moves you could be the best in the world at the quickest. Correct. And so, so like, for instance, like, let's take, let's take writing movies, Star Wars. Okay. It's an original idea. It was original script, everything. But basically he took concepts from science fiction, combined it with concepts from Westerns, and threw in, let's throw in the structure of the story of Jesus.

53:42And he had Star Wars. He basically combined all these elements, put it together in a script that he wrote fairly quickly, and he had like the greatest selling movie of all time. And then there's another example. I forgot what this is called with the pole vault where it used to be people would run and just run forward over the bar. I don't know any of my sports terms. But then in the 60s, there was this one guy and everyone thought he was crazy. He would jump backwards and suddenly he broke the world record. Like he was the first person to just kind of jump backwards over doing the pole vault. And then now everybody does it.

54:19That's in the Olympics. That's the only way to do it. And it's named after him. I forgot what it's called, the something flip. And he only did that through experimenting. No one else, for some reason, had ever jumped backwards over the vault. No, they were following the rules. Yeah. And so this really is how you get to be the best in the world at something. You make it your own. I know one guy, for instance, loves sports and loves science. And so he decided to specialize in both. and he became the youngest writer at Sports Illustrated. His name's David Epstein. He wrote the book Range. And by combining things, that's another way to skip these 10 ,000 hours.

54:58He didn't have to be the best scientist. He didn't have to be the most knowledgeable of sports, but he is the best in the world at understanding the science of sports. So those intersections are often where you can find out where you're the best in the world. Where do you think that you developed this way of thinking? because it's, I mean, dare I say it's unique. I feel like it is unique in a world where, you know, when we go to public school, this is not how they want you to think because this is annoying. Were you an annoying student by any means? Were you asking a lot of questions? Were you inquisitive?

55:32Were you outside the box? I don't think I was in that sense because I didn't really enjoy school at all. So I would just skip school as much as possible. Like I just didn't go whenever I could avoid going. like I were there what was were you thinking about other things yeah I was always just working on other things on my own in the back of the classroom I didn't get good grades at all and uh and because I just didn't care I really didn't care at all I only was I maybe this is a problem but I could only do what I was interested in doing so some years if I wasn't interested in making money okay I'd make the minimum and do what I love doing other years in life I was was interested in money.

56:10So I focused on that. But in the same in school, I just never was interested in grades. I could only do it if I was interested. It's almost like a problem. It's not a problem though. I mean, in my opinion, my humble opinion, I think it's the way that it was meant to be. And I think we're too much pushed and indoctrinated to just make the money because the money is the thing that's supposed to fix the problems and the success. And I know that we talked about this quite at great length when I was on your podcast and about how it fixed nothing for me. When I got to the belt, it was that optical illusion for me.

56:41That's like a beautiful, shiny belt and the money and the things that come with that are sure to fix everything. I just bought into what we kind of been told. Like you just make your career and you make your money and you get the big house and you get all the things and all the things make you happy, right? It's like, it's a crock of shit. It doesn't make you happy at all. I really honestly think that I could have lived in a cardboard box. And if I had loved myself the way that I do now, I would have been very fulfilled, which again is happiness. When I use happiness loosely, I want happy. Sometimes I say that and it's not exactly what I mean.

57:13I mean fulfilled. Yeah. You have wellbeing. You feel like you have community. You feel like you're doing good in the world and you have friends. Yeah. Yeah. Purpose. And one time I tried this experiment where there was a period where I didn't own a home and then I was renting and my lease was up. And I decided, you know what? I don't even want to rent an apartment. I don't want to rent and I don't want to own. So I just, I actually threw away everything I owned. So I was going away on a trip. This was in 2015. I was going away on a trip and I got a friend of mine to go to my house and throw everything out.

57:54Don't leave anything. And I said, don't call me. I don't want you to ask me any questions, take your family. You can keep whatever you want. You could sell whatever you want and keep the money. You could give to charity whatever you want, or you could throw everything else away. She did call me once and say, you sure you want to throw out your diploma? And I said, that's the first thing I would throw out, just throw out my diploma. And so I got back, my lease was up. I had no place to go. So I just started staying in Airbnbs and all I had was basically the backpack I had taken with me on this business trip.

58:22And I stayed that way for about three years, just living in Airbnbs. And I tried that experiment and it was great. I loved it. And it's not even that much more, I don't even know if it's more expensive than renting, because when you stay in Airbnbs, you don't have to pay the rent. You don't have to pay maintenance. There's no utilities. And I would eat out every day. I didn't have any, but I would eat out simply. I wouldn't go to fancy restaurants every day. And it was just a great way to live. But when you start, and my kids at the time weren't living with me, but they would visit on the weekends and they always liked a different neighborhood every time.

59:03And, but then eventually a friend of mine told me, look, if you're going to start dating and you want to get married again, you need an actual place. Like a woman wants a place. Sensibility. Yeah. No one's going to trust you if you're moving around all the time. Oh my goodness. What do you feel like you took away from that experience? What a unique experience. I don't think many people could say that they did that by choice at least. Yeah, I would say I really learned that I don't need anything. Like I want money because that is a way to be, you know, have some financial freedom and not worry.

59:37Like if you get sick, you could take care of yourself. If my kids get sick, I could take care of them. I could do things that I want to do and I have more choices. but I really, there's not a single material possession that I would want or need. I just got that out of my head for forever. And now, so I did meet someone, I got married and she had all her things, like a lifetime filled with things like most people do. And like nothing in my, I would say not very few things in my house are mine, but I don't mind, but I know that I don't really need any of it. That's so freeing. Thank you.

1:00:28I think about minimalist mindset and I'm trying to dip more into that. Maybe my next list tomorrow will be things that I can like, ideas of things that how I can minimalize. There we go. Well, your new house too, it sounds like by doing things like composting and things like that, you're reducing dependence on the outside world. So it seems like that is a direction that you've been going. Even at my house now, I try to have almost a zero waste policy. It's very close to zero. We have chickens. So most things go to the chickens, at least with like food. And in general, I just, I hate being wasteful.

1:01:03For me, it's just, I don't like, I think we're gluttonous in our consumption of everything in America. And we were very wasteful and we just, you know, throw our food away or throw it, you know, throw it away. And it's like, I don't like that. But so for me, this is something that I fixated on quite a bit. It's like, how can I be the least wasteful as possible? Like, well, if I get chickens and I can feed them, you know, the scraps and the foods. And if, and when we have a dog, We've had dogs at different points, but they get the meat and the scraps. And then the compost, I have a little compost that I spin, and I don't have it in ground.

1:01:39That's what I really want to learn about is making a big compost in ground. What does it mean in ground? It's like you dig out, well, you kind of dig out an area and you line it, and then you compost the stuff in the ground. The one that I have now is an above ground one, so it's like this container, if you will, that you put everything into, and then you kind of turn it. and the other one in the ground, you actually like mix the mulch like by hand and you kind of like, you let it just literally lay out on the ground and you cover it with leaves and grass and then you mix it and it gets all hot and does its thing, but it's like right there on the ground.

1:02:10There's nothing really to hold it. You don't have to buy anything. You just need the space to put the stuff. I see. I don't know how to do any of that stuff. That would be a good thing to learn. Yeah, I think it would. I mean, it makes me feel better. There's something for me that makes me feel really happy about not throwing things in the trash. What about, here's a bad idea. So what if someone should start a restaurant called Leftovers and it's just leftovers? You know how like restaurants, they have to throw out their food if it's not eaten. Like, and they have to do it. It's like legal. Lawsuits, you know, I got food poisoning.

1:02:41Yeah. So what if there's a restaurant that just takes leftovers thrown out by other restaurants and serves that as meals? It'd be great. But like I said, people will be like, I got food poisoning. You know, there's all those things in place. But I love the idea. but I think I always think about that too I'm like gosh there's so much food wasted can't we just like give it to like homeless people and stuff but then you know there's a story here about this homeless person that sued and got millions of dollars and put this business that had good intentions out of business and just unfortunately I think the way that it works here is against some people doing the good things because it just doesn't if it's not profit driven someone will find a way to make it profit driven and it'll be at your expense it's what it seems like it's set up to do we're just like a sue happy country yeah oh yeah definitely And I think, you know, I always think government is set up to help those who can't help themselves.

1:03:29And that's kind of like the end of it. But now it's sort of like everybody feels nobody can help themselves. So the whole legal system is set up to basically just tear everyone down. Right. Yeah. So it's very unfortunate. But I love that idea. I do want to live off of my land. I want to have goats and chickens and cows and even meat bunnies. Isn't that wild? I just really learned about the benefit of having meat bunnies. What's a meat bunny? It's literally bunnies that are raised for the meat. Like you literally just, you eat them and they procreate so quickly. I mean, it's like every 12 weeks they have like new babies.

1:04:05And so you literally can like make rapid stew and like all these things and you just, you eat them. You just eat them and it's a quick turnover. See, and this is what I worry about. Like if you were teleported a thousand years in the past, you could survive if you do all this stuff. This is kind of my thought behind it. I don't know how I would survive. I want to be, I'm very motivated to be self-sufficient. Like to just the idea that if you took, is it the only show Naked and Afraid? No. You've never heard of the show. Okay. I'll look it up. Yes. Look at, so they drop these people in the wilderness with nothing, not even clothes.

1:04:40And they have - Oh, I have heard about this. Yeah. They have to figure out how to survive. And so they have to either make their own clothes or make their own, they make shoes if they need them or whatever it is that they need in order to make it through the, you know, however long I think it's a time period that they have to make it for, feed themselves. There's something that soothes me thinking that I could do that well, that if I needed to, like a survivalist mindset, and maybe that's the fighter in me, but it's like knowing that if everything, power went down, like the power grid, and it all went down and we didn't have phones to tell us where to drive to, like, could I get us from this place?

1:05:15Could I feed my family? Could I do those things? Do I know how to preserve food? Like, let's say, you know, we have all these fruit trees on this property. So part of the reason for the canning and things like that is like, I want to know how to preserve the food. And can I do that over a fire? Can I do it with like the absolute basic necessities just in case? Because I feel like this is a skill set that would be beneficial for every human to know. We've just gotten so far out of touch. We just assume that like we do our hunting in grocery stores now. Exactly. Yeah. And I am guilty of this. I can't do anything.

1:05:48I honestly would not survive more. Like on that show, I would survive like an hour. And then I'd say, get me out of here. I can't do it. Yeah. And fortunately, we live in a world where people have the option, but like, God forbid, we didn't have the option for, you know, any reason. I just like the idea of being prepared to like use my hands, use my body, use my skills in the land and to be able to survive if it ever happened. Do you think you would be able to compete on that show? Yeah, I think I would be able to. You should. You should try it. Yeah. Is it still running? I don't even know. I don't know.

1:06:20I don't know. But that's the other thing too. Think about that one idea. So you could compete on that show. You could produce the next version of that show. You could write about how to survive on that show. You could do podcasts about how to survive on that show. There's so many ways to slice wanting to know this knowledge. As well as, okay, I need this knowledge just to live in a house. Yes. It's so good. I love how your mind thinks. Honestly, the more that I talk to you, I realized like we have similar mindset. I just think that you have developed this a little bit more and you've been successful in doing it where I feel like sometimes people look at what I've done and be like, well, you got, you kind of, kind of got lucky.

1:07:03Like people, people kind of think that I got lucky because you look at the, the, you know, well, the landscape of women's MMA wasn't really, it was wide open. Like there's not as many women. So it was easier for you to get to the top. And, you know, there weren't that many women in wrestling. So, you know, you just, that was on your side. And then there was this and there was that. And, you know, just, you're not actually smart. You just have gotten kind of lucky and you make stupid decisions and it just happens to work out. Like, I feel that comes down on me a lot. Like, people look at me and say, like, she's not making like these, and how this works out for her, I don't know.

1:07:40That's kind of how I feel like people look at me sometimes. And I'm like, I don't have a business degree, but I have a lot of ideas. I like how you do. Like, well, I could do this and I could do that and I could do this and I could do that. And then I could turn it into this and I could turn it into that. Then my mind wanders in these ways. Yeah. And I wonder if that's like, I get that a lot too. A lot of people out there will think I'm just an idiot. And they're like, how did this guy, only in America, How did this guy get any success at all? And, and, but I think people don't understand that you create your luck.

1:08:14Like you create, luck is almost a hundred percent created. Unless it's like winning the lottery or something, because look at all the work you've had to do. You had to buy a ticket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to buy a ticket. You still had to create some degree. Right. So like it just, you know, but like to be, to reach the levels you've reached and it doesn't matter if, of course, everything's right place at right time. So that's not even a fair criticism. Bill Gates would not have been successful if it wasn't for the fact that he was essentially born in 1953. So when he was the ideal age to be an entrepreneur, that was exactly when the microcomputer, the personal computer was being invented.

1:08:50So he was lucky. He's at the right place, born in the right year to be Bill Gates. And everything has that. So it's not even a fair criticism. But the other thing about luck is that it looks, hard work looks like luck to people who just are not aware of, you know, they don't know. So they don't know what hard work is. So they just think that success is luck. And, and, but I get, I, I always tell myself, oh, I don't care what people think, but ultimately I do a little bit. Like it's hard not to care what people think. Yeah. Well, because it, to some degree, it is a reflection of, of the perception that we're leaving on this world.

1:09:30And so I do think that there's some value in at least being, you know, at least listening to what people have to say about you, because even if it's negative, I think we just need to have a good barometer basically on understanding what is actually valuable to developing further and what is not. Because sometimes constructive criticism is great. It's like, I didn't think about that. I didn't think about it that way. Or gosh, I didn't realize that when I do it this way, it could have this impact or whatnot. Now there are a lot of people out there who just want to hate. And that's just it. You have to kind of know who to trust with the constructive criticism.

1:10:08And it's not easy to give constructive criticism. So it must not be easy for them to give it to you. I know for me, it's hard to give constructive criticism. It's a hard skill. So to get actual constructive criticism, probably very little of criticism is constructive. So you really have to know how to weed out the bad, but it's hard because it could be hurtful. Oh, for sure. Nobody wants their feelings hurt. Even if you, people say, oh, I don't care what people say about me. Sometimes they just hit by accident. They hit the right buttons. They care the most. Yeah. People who say that all the time oftentimes care the most.

1:10:42And they, they put up that hard exterior because they want to, you know, deflect because they don't have a better skillset, in my opinion, of internalizing it. And then some, you know, I used to be the same way, of course, you know, I was like, I don't care what people have to say about me and this chip on my shoulder. And I don't care if people think that women shouldn't fight and I don't care and I don't care and I don't care. But I do care. But now the way that I choose to let it affect me instead of just deflecting and pretending like I don't care and ignoring it, pretending like it's not something that has any bearing on me, which does, is that I would say after I had a plant medicine journey, for me, it let me dip into the empathy and realizing kind of what my mom always told me is that, you know, people are going through their own problems and issues and they have their own trauma and they have the thing.

1:11:32And you have to sit back and say, you know, somebody, granted it's not a bot because I feel like a lot of, a lot of the information that I think comments and things that come on the internet now are not even real people. I think this is where the cancel culture, I don't even think that's really a real, I think it's mostly fabricated. That's my, you know, if you want to get into my conspiracy theory. I think that's probably right. And I think that's another thing to be careful about on social media. Like most facts are just not true. Most things that people say are just not true. Most things are not true, even the way people present their lives.

1:12:06Even if you look on my social media, you know, the way that I present on social media, I definitely want to, I'm never disingenuous. Is that the right word? Disingenuous? I just drew a blank on how to say that. I think that's the right word if I were to guess. And I never want to come across inorganic or anything like that, but I don't show you all the aspects because that's not what that is for me. You know, social media is an opportunity to promote what it is that you want to promote. And so you will never see my darkest moments on social media. I mean, for the most part, that's not something that I share.

1:12:40I will talk here on a podcast and I will be about it, but I'm not going to be in a bathroom crying, you know, mascara streaming down my face. I'm not going to click a selfie and put it on social media. That's just not what you're going to see. But those, I certainly have those moments. I absolutely have those moments where it's just like, I am so overwhelmed. I'm rock bottom. I'm crying. I'm frustrated. And then it's like, okay, what have I learned from this? And then I maybe sometimes will put words behind that in a message in a podcast or in a, you know, in a newsletter or in something like that.

1:13:12And about a lesson that I learned in that moment and how I moved through that. But that's not - Yeah, I find that there's like a grace period. Like I can't do it the day my mascara is running down in the mirror, but maybe like three or four years later, I could, I've learned, there's enough distance. Maybe I've really learned enough from it that then I could write about it or talk about it. But I think it helps to feel sorry for people. That is what has helped me when I see somebody deflecting like negativity towards me for random reasons, somebody I don't know. So it's not like constructive criticism from somebody that I care about.

1:13:47It's what you would call hate. Hate mail, hate comment, hate whatever. I'm like, okay, well, either it's a bot or it's somebody who hasn't met themselves any further along either. Yeah, no, I agree. And let me ask you, when you were rising up and there was articles about you and TV and you're achieving your success, did you have family members who suddenly, for no real understandable reason, did they suddenly hated you? Or people who were otherwise close to you? Honestly, I cannot say that that was an experience of my own. And if it was, it's something I didn't let sit deep enough to me where I can recall it now.

1:14:33There were people that suddenly came out of the woodwork and kind of wanted to be my best friend that weren't. I did have that. which I guess is the flip side of the coin too. Like people just react to you differently. So it's hard for people to just take your success for what it is. Exactly. Yeah. Sometimes people all of a sudden started expecting things. And that was really interesting and hard for me to kind of try to wrap my head around at 20 years old, in my 20s. And what if you didn't live up to those expectations? Well, then they would either disappear out of my life or they would say that I've changed.

1:15:08Right. That was very interesting to me. I was like, you know what? I had to sit back and actually ask myself that question. Like, have I changed? Because you hear this all the time. You know, people get famous and it goes to their head and they change. They stop being the person that they were and they're arrogant now and they're not who they were. And I had to sit back and say, is that me? Like, do I honestly, I said, and my best accountability said, I don't really feel like I have changed. I still am pretty simple. Honestly, you know, we were, I want to show this to you. It's like, I am already implementing this minimalist mindset.

1:15:43Whenever I go shopping, which is usually at thrift stores, I've always talked myself out of buying like new clothes. I'm not like a clothes person. I've had this vest for probably five years. These shoes were given to me by a friend of mine. And I think the skirt was, yeah, it was like a thrift store purchase. And this tank top was given to me by my same friend that gave me these shoes. okay so this is how um and i create different outfits and different looks with the same things over and over and over and over again and i try to repurpose things and i keep things for forever until they just like don't work anymore and i guess where i was going with this is like you know i drive a toyota forerunner it doesn't have rims and wheels on it or whatever you know it doesn't have um i don't even wash it that often i don't i don't really care that much about those things i don't like investing my time and making people believe that i'm so great because what i drive, what I pull into with is how somehow you're supposed to judge my value.

1:16:36I really want to get away from that. So I was looking at that and say like, gosh, even though I've made enough money, like I'm good, I own my house, I own my car, all this stuff. I don't think that I've changed because if anything, I still do the things I do. I still shop the way that I shop. I still treat people with the empathy and kindness and those things. So I don't think that I've changed. but what has changed is the expectation people now have of me because I've reached this pillar of status and this pillar of you know of money and and that I could now give more than I could have before but all of a sudden why is it an expectation how has my success and my blood and broken noses and sweat and tears all of a sudden become something that you're entitled to right and so that's why sometimes it's hard to understand where criticism or comments come from because the other people change around you.

1:17:27Their expectations of you start to change. And then if they start to criticize by saying, oh, she's changed, you have to think, yes, maybe I've changed, but also how have they changed? So I like this approach of feeling sorry for them because, oh, it's too bad they don't realize what's going on in their own head. They're having this weird interaction with me based on their own expectations. And then you have to decide for yourself, Is that what's happening or did I change really?

1:18:10You've had tons of news articles written about you. What percentage would you say contained at least one falsehood of all the articles ever written about you? um i mean there's a lot yeah yeah there's probably like almost 100 probably and especially misrepresentation of what was actually said you know breaking apart you know something so it's like a partial truth but a partial lie but it's implied based on the rest of the article that yeah this that's really frustrating and so think about if that's your experience with all the media ever written about you think about all the media ever written in general probably almost everything out there is just not true.

1:18:49So that's why it's really hard to know anything except your own experience. And, you know, that's what I tell myself when I get criticisms for one reason or other, like nothing, nobody's opinion really counts. But of course, again, sometimes I'll hit the right buttons and, you know, it'll offend me. Yeah. Oh, it's really interesting to think about. And the only people I would say is maybe my younger brother and my sister, not that they hated me, but I think that there was a, they didn't know how to react and they were very disinterested in everything I was doing, which was kind of hurtful because, you know, it's like your family, it's like your immediate family.

1:19:25It's like, you really expect like the most support from, from your immediate family. But, um, for the, for the large part, I would say fairly disinterested and, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, it's like everyone else wants to like, you know, be there for my next fight and like, see all, you know, see the things. It's like people who don't even know me are just like so excited. And it's like, then you can't really get, you know, your own like siblings to be interested in it. And, you know, my dad kind of came along late in all of this as far as like being supportive. And I think it took an amount of success before my dad started to be, you know, supportive.

1:20:01Because it was finally something he could measure it. So it was something that was measurable in his world. And so he was able to, oh, okay, I understand now. Yes. Your success intersected with his ability to measure this. Yes. And that, but that is painful when it happens to siblings. Like siblings can get very distant. You're no longer the Misha they knew as a little girl. You're Misha, the fighter, the success, you know, it's different. Yeah. It's hard, I think, for siblings. I think so too. And I can understand that. And I don't have any hard feelings towards any of my family for the way that they have interpreted it because we just, nobody prepares you for this stuff.

1:20:39And even my dad, you know, I think, you know, his, a lot of it came from like worry and concern and not understanding what it was I was doing. But as a father, it's like the last thing you want to do is like not be able to protect your daughter, right? That just must be like a hard feeling, even as a significant other, you know, it's like, it's like, could you imagine watching your wife go into a fight? Like willing, I mean, it would just be tough, right? It's like you wouldn't want to support that in a way. I don't know. I honestly don't know how, because if that was her thing, actually my first wife was a flyweight golden gloves boxer.

1:21:16Okay. But I never saw her fight. She did that before she had met me. Do you think you might have been nervous at her fights though? It's not that you wouldn't have supported, but I mean like, is there a part of you that would be nervous to see her potentially get hurt? I honestly don't know because I understand it's a sport and there's things that happen. Yeah. So if I was to the point where I was accepting of it from the beginning, I obviously wouldn't want to see her get hurt. But I don't know. I don't know how I would react if I saw her actually getting hit. I don't think my dad was accepting from the beginning.

1:21:45So there's the difference, I suppose. You know, it's like if you enter a situation and you kind of know it. But this one kind of just got the thrust on him. And I think, you know, my dad's like former military, Green Beret, like very much that kind of like protective. and I think for me going out there and willingly getting fight, it was really tough for him to wrap his mind around. It's like his little girl, you know, it's like, what? Like, how do I come to terms with how I feel inside about my role as a man, as a father and what she's doing of her own free will? It's like they didn't match up in any way.

1:22:19It's like two magnets that was like the opposite, you know, attraction. Yeah, I don't know how I'd react. Like when my daughters were born, the thing I mostly thought about was in terms of being sad about it was one day they're going to have kind of the emotional upheavals that I've gone through, whether it's as a teenager going through puberty or young adult or whatever. And that was more what I have been and still am afraid of for them. But I've never thought of them being in like a physical fight. Yeah. And what that might feel like. Yeah. I bet you would be challenging because I think even for me, even understanding this sport, you know, very well myself.

1:22:58If I, you know, seeing my kids, I think would still be challenging because there's just an element of you that doesn't want them to have to go through, you know, the pain, but that's life, you know, and it's just, whether it's physical pain, emotional pain, all kinds of different pain. There is value in having to get through that. I guess because I've never been in a fight, so I don't know what it's really like. I don't know what that kind of pain is like. I know what the pain of, like, let's say in a breakup is like, that I know but I've never been bleeding from a fight so I have no clue. Honestly the fights themselves are not very painful if I'm being totally honest.

1:23:30Usually nine times out of ten most of the strikes in a fight are not painful because you have adrenaline going and you just don't. Have you ever even been in like a I don't know an unexpected situation where you've never been like attacked or anything like that nothing ever happened? Nothing. What about like just maybe playing like a club sport or something like that or like sport at school? Did you do anything like that where it's like, okay, you had to have had an instance where you've just like, you know, you've just like something hit you out of somewhere and it's like you just don't have the time to react to like the fact it hurts later but in that moment because it's just like so quick and there's just enough to process that it's not painful.

1:24:13You know, maybe I'm too careful physically. I don't know. I've never really, I haven't been to a doctor since I was 18. Like I've never had anything. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a, there's a friend of mine who was telling me, she's like, gosh, I just don't think I get ever, and she's the sweetest. Her name's Joyce, but she was like, she had gotten jumped by these two men and, you know, long time ago. And she said, you know what, gosh, she was recalling it. She's like, I guess you're right. Like I was all bruised and everything, but it's like in that moment, there was just so much going on. I didn't actually, like the, the stuff that was going on in that moment wasn't actually painful, like physically painful because you're processing so much.

1:24:48So I think that there's something that just doesn't allow in those high pressure situations to feel the physical pain. It's almost like it's not necessary. Do you feel it afterwards? Yes. That's the part I worry about. So it's like not only that you feel the physical pain afterwards, but that it's like a constant reminder oftentimes of, you know, a lot of times there's more pain physical that comes with like a loss. And like that enduring that, like so when I've like broken my nose and lost a fight and then it's like for two weeks, it's like you don't get to think about it. about anything else because it's like...

1:25:20Yeah. And it's not like, so you've lost. So you're feeling like the shame of that. You're feeling the pain and there's no way to have a rematch. You can't just say, hey, meet me today. We're fighting again. Like there's no rematch. It's not like a game of chess or like when you can just like do it again the next day or the next weekend. If ever. I mean, there are rematches that I would have loved to have had and I'll never get another chance. It's a one-time deal. And then forever, you look at it and you feel that's a mark on your score. Yes. And you have to deal with that. Yep. That's a kind of pain.

1:25:55It is. It's just like forever written in stone. But, you know, it's just one of those things that I think you just have to learn like anything else. You just got to get through it. You know, in your book, you talk about the pillars of health. And we've talked a little bit about the mind muscle. And I really love that because I don't think that enough people think about their brain and their creativity. as a thought process. And I'm kind of someone who I'm trying to inspire people to lean on their intuition more, but there's such a level of disconnect, I think, in most of the things that we do that we're just kind of going through the motions.

1:26:28We don't stop to trigger the creative mind or even our self-conscious, you know, being aware of the things that we desire, the things that we need, the things that we want. And you talked about it, you know, atrophying. And I really loved the way that you, you drew that analogy because, um, you know, just as a, as a professional athlete, um, you know, we work and we get, we get the muscles because of our body and we're constantly using our body. Um, but like if we sit, uh, you know, an injury happens or maybe, you know, you're in a coma, like Ben Askren, for example, I don't know if you know who he is, but amazing wrestler, you know, fought in the UFC and he was, he got like some kind of necrosis of his lungs and his wife convinced him to go to the hospital.

1:27:19He had to get a double lung transplant. Otherwise like healthy looking, like muscular, great in shape, always been an athlete. Where did it come from? Did he just get some infection? He just, he did some competition and then he somehow got an infection in his lungs and they don't really know why or how that this happened. It just seems like not possible, but it happened. And he was in a coma for like 50 days and woke up and he was just like a skeleton. I was, I mean, all that muscle just basically withered away. And so, you know, you look at him and you're like, oh my God. I mean, you're like, whoa, especially if you knew, you know, Ben Askren, like you've seen him fight in the UFC, you know, the man, great mindset though.

1:28:01I feel like his mental mindset didn't, didn't atrophy at all. I mean, within his first couple of days of waking up, you know, he's doing this video. The guy can still barely talk because he's still using these lungs that are newly transplanted. And I mean, he's just out there spreading this positivity. I'm like, how can you be like, it's so admirable how he can be so positive in a situation where obviously there's a lot of, and I'm not saying that every moment's easy for him. I'm sure it's not, but that's the point is his mentality getting through that is very admirable. I think, I think mindset is so important and is underestimated, particularly in sports or any kind of competition where, even business, where it's just hard to be better than the people you're competing against.

1:28:43Mindset has got to be like 50 % of it. Because let's say you're fighting someone with equal skills of you. The person who's more positive, more optimistic, less thinking... When the first time you're hit during a match, there's probably a tendency to think, oh, here we go again. I'm getting hit, I'm going down, like then that's going to change how you behave. And for someone like that too, like if they're just dwelling, like, of course this happened to me that I got this infection, there goes my career. Maybe his career would be over that, or he wouldn't be able to kind of jumpstart something new for himself.

1:29:15Like mindset is 50 % of everything we do at least. If not more. If not more. And I think that was the thing about like writing the ideas down and exercising this idea muscle is that it's more than just giving me ideas eventually, it gave me kind of a mindset that, oh, I can come up with ideas still, that I'm not beaten by what's been trying to beat me down. And I'm not defeated yet. Yeah. Is that something that you had to develop in resilience to, you know, making a lot of money and then losing it? I'm really interested in the first process of you doing that. And I think so many people are afraid to jump before they know the net is there.

1:30:01And so they sit there and they do this and they twiddle their thumbs and they hem and they haw and they don't make any move because they're too afraid to make it and lose it. Or they'll self-sabotage or they'll do these things. So I want to know how you get to the highest point. and then I want to know how you get to the lowest point and then I want to know how you go back up and then how you get more comfortable with the whole idea. I think that's one of the most fascinating things about you. Yeah, and I think getting comfortable, like no one ever wants to lose. Like it sucks every time. Like it's losing in anything.

1:30:40It's just the worst feeling. You go into something thinking you're not going to lose and then you lose. It's the exact opposite of what you expected. But I think, and look, I was very, the first time I started a business, I stayed at my full-time job for 18 months after I started the business. I mean, I had a whole office and employees and everything. And I was kind of sneaking out of my job throughout the day to meet clients and do sales and all that stuff. But I didn't leave my job for 18 months after I started the business. I already had like 20 employees before I fully jumped. So I was very risk averse in that sense, but I still did it.

1:31:16because you still, you can't, if you have an idea and you want to do it and you like it, but you're like, oh no, but it's not right for me right now. You just got to do it or else you don't really want to do it. So you can't twiddle on your thumbs. You have to take some action every day. And this was the problem I had when I lost it all. So I lost it all because I simply made, I started bad businesses and I didn't understand risk and I put all my money, let's say I'd made 15 million selling my first business. I literally put 15 million into my next investments and businesses and they all went bad.

1:31:53And so I lost everything. And that was too much risk. But then I lost everything. And then the problem I had was, I thought I had just been lucky. I thought I had just won the lottery and I'm never going to be able to win the lottery again. That was my one chance and I ruined it. I'm going to lose my house. my kids are never going to know me as a success. They were little babies. I'm not even able to feed them. There was one week and I literally could not feed them. I had no money. After having $15 million, I had less than$100 in the bank account. And it was almost by accident. I just started doing something.

1:32:33I started writing down these ideas. And then bit by bit, I started sending the ideas out to people and trying to build connections again to the outside world. starting from nothing. None of these people I was writing to knew me. I didn't have any network. I had no friends at this point. No one's your friend after you go broke. And at least for me, and it was really hard, but A, I started writing these ideas down. B, I started doing things with them. I'm going to, oh, I'm going to send these, I'm going to come up with ideas for this person and maybe it'll be good for him. And there's a chance he'll reach back to me and on and on.

1:33:10I did this every day. And then also by doing that, I got a sense that I can't waste time thinking about the past. I was constantly filled with regret. Like, why did I do this? Why did I do this? But that was just taking up mental real estate. And I couldn't afford, I had to feed my babies. I couldn't afford to take up this mental real estate anymore, nor could I hope on any one thing happening in the future. I just have to try everything. So every idea I had, I just would try. I would do something. And that's really how, and just every single time, because I've probably been like dead broke to zero.

1:33:47So then I would make millions again, go back to zero again, make millions again, go back to zero. I probably did this three times. And then I think I did get a little comfortable. It didn't feel any better, but at least I knew, okay, I know the playbook for this. I'm going to come up with ideas and then I'm going to do things. And I'm better at coming up with ideas now because I do it every day for 20 years, been writing down 10 ideas a day. So you build that muscle until it's really good. So I always now know it's depressing if I go broke. I don't knock on wood, I got to knock on wood later, but it would be massively depressing, but I know I would be able to climb out of it, even though I would be horrified and depressed and ashamed.

1:34:30Right. Do you diversify a little bit now to ensure that that won't necessarily happen? I diversify my interests so that I'm not all in on any one thing. Like I might be - You think you did more fixating before where it was like one thing? Yeah. And okay, if this is a great idea, I would think more of reward than risk before. Oh, this is a great idea. I'm going to make$100 million if I put$10 million into this. That's a bad idea if all you have is$10 million. So I just did not understand the risk reward. equation. And now also you just get a little bit more sophisticated about how to execute an idea.

1:35:13That's a skill. There's having ideas. People say ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. That is just not true because execution is, you have to have good ideas on how to execute. So if let's say you wanted to start a homeschool, you could go out there and say, oh, I'm going to raise$50 million to start a homeschool system. Or you can say, oh, I'm just going to homeschool my kids and then tell the neighbors they're welcome also to bring their kids over. So one way would be a stupid idea to execute. Another idea would be a smart idea for execution. So execution ideas are a subset of ideas.

1:35:49And so still that skill is important to execute. It's the same skill as having ideas. So I think I'm a little better now at that execution skill because I'm better at having ideas. So good. It's a way to rethink the way through a problem. Yeah. Yeah. I'm better at blocking and tackling on the way to execution, whereas I was not good at it all. And also, you know, your weakness is more like I know what things I'm good at, what things I'm not good at. Like you described how your fiance is more maybe detail oriented or he's good at a lot of the things that you're not plan. Yeah. And I know the good things that I need and the people around me.

1:36:31I'm really bad at paperwork. So I have someone who just does paperwork for me. I'm really bad at keeping track of my schedule. So I have someone who helps me with my schedules. I'm a poor judge of character. So I make sure if I'm doing a deal with anybody, I tend to like everybody. So I make sure before I do a deal with somebody that someone else is with me to make sure, hey, I checked all the boxes on this person. So you got to know also what you're, it's hard to, better to solve for what you're weak at than just simply be good at everything. I can't be good at everything. That's a really good one.

1:37:06I like that a lot too. I think I try to operate more in my area of excellence now. This is kind of, I think what you're saying is I know what I'm good at. Like where does the draw pull me the most and like what am I good at within that area and what do I have to delegate or outsource the resources to complete this task? And I've gotten more comfortable with that because I used to be a do-it-yourself kind of person in every single way, top to bottom. And it's just like, you just don't, you're just not as efficient. I mean, so you have to build that good support system. So I like that. That was a great takeaway.

1:37:39Is there anything else that you think that people should kind of know that's a good takeaway that you have from all your experiences that you've drawn? Well, you know, I do wonder about this idea that of how important is obsession? Like could, of, you know, I do think you can't really get great at something unless you're obsessed with it. And then I'm just trying to figure out if there's maybe better ways to, for me myself, I'm trying to figure out if there's better ways to, or other ways to enjoy something other than just being obsessed with it. And so I don't know if this is a takeaway. It's more for me, something I'm trying to learn and get better at is to enjoy without obsession.

1:38:22And one thing that has helped me is to think about things in terms of, oh, here's an interesting quest to do. So let's say I want to do stand-up comedy. I don't have to be the best in the world at it, but it's a quest to just go up there and do it and learn a few skills. Or like when I was younger, my own competitive thing was I played chess when I was very young and I got to a decent level. And then I stopped for 25 years. And then I started again thinking, oh, I'm going to be just as good as an adult or as an older person. And it's been so disappointing not being as good as when I was younger.

1:39:03Imagine if you started fighting again when you were 50 years old, you wouldn't be as good. You might be disappointed in yourself, but then you would say rationally, no, no, I'm older. So it makes sense that I'm not as good. But for chess, because it's like a mental thing, I thought I would be just as good and I wasn't. And so I'm just trying to figure out how to, for myself, that it would be a better way. One way I can improve my life now is to learn how to enjoy without necessarily being great at something. And so I'm just, we're always on a path. And that's kind of where I'm at, is trying to figure out how to, you know, they always say appreciate the journey, which is a little hard to do sometimes.

1:39:40You always want to get there. Nobody enjoys actually being in the plane. You enjoy landing. yeah so so true until you have kids and at home and you're like oh this is actually now there's something i can enjoy about the plane that's true and quiet and just like listen to my audible book and my podcast when they when they put wi-fi on planes they ruin plane travel oh i know right because then all the access the work can still come yeah that was kind of like the forced quiet that i needed but anyways um how how do people follow along with what you're doing what's the best way to um uh you know probably follow me on twitter or instagram or something yeah or listen to me on this episode listen again and again listen a thousand times there's one episode yeah so your podcast oh the james altucher show is my podcast which you have been a guest on and hope you'll be a guest on again i love doing this in person too it's been so much better yeah i love Do you always do episodes in person?

1:40:39Almost. If I can, I really try to do things in person as much as possible. But Vegas is a relatively easy spot to eventually get someone here. And I'm just patient with my guests. You know, most of the people that I would be talking to usually have plans to travel to Vegas within the year. So it makes it a little easier. Yeah. When I had a comedy club in New York City, I would do the podcast in the comedy club. Sometimes on the stage. It would be great. But now I'm outside of New York City. I do most of them on Zoom. You're still over in that area though? No, I'm outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Okay.

1:41:09So like I'm a Southerner now, as you can probably tell. So, yes. I mean, I try to do it in person as much as I can. And yeah, but I'd be, you know, happy to come out there at some point. We just have to, you know, figure it out. Or you come out to Vegas again. Yeah, I'll definitely do it. Just do the podcast. What are you going to do when you're in Idaho though? Homestead. Homestead, homeschool. Oh, you mean as far as the podcast? Yeah. No, I'll still do the podcast. And I've thought about that. planning it and grouping it to where I come back to Vegas and have the people here and just knock them out, but potentially have some people there too.

1:41:42I just haven't gotten quite that far as like how that will work and how logistically if it would be, if people would be willing to, you know, come to Boise, would they be interested in that? Or is it easier to piggyback on something else that they might already be doing here or just to bring them here? People just like to come here. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's not a hard stretch for people to say, oh yeah, I'll head over to Las Vegas at some point. Most people are just like, yeah, I'd love to. So we'll see. We'll figure it out. But either way, I'm, you know, right now determined to keep it going because I love it.

1:42:13I love everything that I learned from every episode and guest that I have on. So, and, you know, for you today, this is fantastic. I love having these kind of thought-provoking intellectual conversations. They're honestly my favorite podcasts. And me too. Thank you so much for having me on. And again, thanks for coming on to my show as well. So always a pleasure. Yeah. Until next time. Thanks.

1:43:02Don't miss the man-made nightmares in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the world-ending chaos in 28 Days Later. There's something in the blood. All the scares, all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.