Digital Social Hour Podcast by Sean Kelly: Why Gen Z Might Be the Most Talented Generation in History

22:37Valid point. You pay a lot of attention to politics these days? Not really, because it's so just stupid, everyone's opinion. What's a good opinion? I just feel like it doesn't affect people as much as they think. I know that could be kind of hard for people to hear, but we're going to make money no matter what. We made money under Biden. We made money under Trump. You know what I mean? When was the last time? And look, for some people, they will have a real answer to this, but when was the last time you were personally affected by a policy made by the president of the United States? Nothing major.

23:10Like when the card appreciation went from like 100 % to 80%, I lost like 10K, but it's like, whatever, you know? Yeah, and like, did tariffs affect you? Not really in the podcast space. Now I know with luxury cards and even watches, it's affected their businesses. Yeah, so okay. So some businesses, it affected temporarily. It doesn't affect them. They don't go out of business. Tiffany's is not going out of business. So it affects them a little bit. And then they figure it out. So, and they use marketing to make other things more attractive. or they start making stuff in places that are in tariffs, that don't have tariffs.

23:43It doesn't really affect that many people. If you worked in Detroit, the change in that industry years ago affected those people. But that wasn't like one president deciding, okay, we're going to outsource all car manufacturing to China or Japan or whatever. That happened over a long time. It had nothing to do with politics. Yeah, I think local politics matters way more. Yeah, and then, so I was talking to my daughters who live in New York City, and I'm like, who did you vote for? for mayor. And they both told me Mamdani? No, they said Zoran. And I'm like, you mean Mamdani? And they're like, who's that?

24:17I'm like, well, Zoran's his first name. And they're like, oh, we didn't know. And I'm like, well, how did you decide to vote for him? And they both said they were given a cheat sheet and they just went down the cheat sheet and the cheat sheet told them who to vote for on the ballot. So that's how most people, I think, vote. That's crazy to me. So he's going to win, it looks like. Yeah, and I am glad he's going to win because I want to see how screwed up these policies get. And then just once, although nobody ever pays attention to history, but you could say, look, this policy didn't work. You can't freeze rents.

24:52You can't freeze grocery prices. It's impossible. So, I mean, the Soviet Union, they tried it and they all starved. China, what is it? 40 million people starved when they tried to freeze these prices. So we'll see what happens. New York City, we're both familiar with it from our different periods of our lives. Like it's a hard city to run. I just went back there to film at Spotify Studios. I still feel like it hasn't fully recovered. I know you went famous and viral for that article five years ago saying it would never recover, but I agree with you. Yeah, it's really sad in that people, of course, look, I wanted New York City to be successful.

25:27I wanted to be successful. I was good friends with Eric Adams before he was mayor. I remember the first meeting when he decided to run for mayor was me and like three other people in the meeting. You know, I haven't spoken to him actually. Maybe to his credit, he hasn't spoken to me since he's become mayor, but - Wow, he cut you off. I think so, actually. Like I even wrote an article supporting him. I liked him. He was over my house for Thanksgiving. He has not responded to me since he became mayor. Do you think it's because of your article about - No, because we spoke afterwards and he actually wanted me to endorse him after I wrote that article.

26:02And I don't know what it is. maybe, maybe he just didn't really like me that much. I don't know. Well, I saw you on another show saying how you'll get along with these politicians on the show and then they'll never hit you up after. Yeah. No, everybody, everybody's so charismatic and I'm, I'm like, oh my, like particularly like actors, like when they come on the show and maybe you experienced this, like I'll be thinking in the middle of the episode, oh my God, this is my new best friend. Like he's on my favorite TV shows and now he's my best friend. And then I'll never hear from them again. I'll say, oh, I'm in LA.

26:32Now you said reach up and nothing. Same. It is a little disheartening because I feel like on podcasts, I'm pretty much myself. Maybe I alter at five, 10%, but I'm genuinely myself. But some people just have a switch and they're completely different. And I got to admire that. They're so good at it. So yeah. So I got it. Yeah. I got to give them props because you would never know off camera if that's who they were or not. You know, it's, it's an interesting thing because when an episode, like, look, you meet somebody for the first time and you kind of have to build rapport very quickly. You know, I did what I will call kind of an example of a podcast back in the 90s.

27:07So I used to do this website. I did HBO.com's website. So HBO, the TV network. And I pitched them on this idea. Hey, just like you have, you know, gritty original TV shows, let's do a gritty original web show for the website. They don't do this anymore, but they let me do whatever I wanted. So I did this web show called 3 a.m. about what happens in New York City at three in the morning, like on a Tuesday night, a random night. And I had to get comfortable with just walking up to people at three in the morning in not necessarily the best areas and just talk to them and find out what was going on in their lives.

27:42And so that helped me build up that skill that was useful much later on for podcasting. It helped you build that confidence. Yeah, because I was really not confident at all doing that. Yeah, I don't think you could learn confidence in a book. No, oh no. I mean, I don't think you can, it's very hard to learn anything in a book. Really? Yeah. Like what have, what have you learned in a book? I guess directly you still need to implement what you learn. So do you mean like it's hard to take action on what you learn in a book? Yeah. Like, okay. Like, let's say a book about entrepreneurship. What are you going to really learn that?

28:15I mean, you really have to learn an on the job experience. Like everybody already thinks they're a good judge of people. Yeah. Most people are. I know for a fact now I am not a good judge of people. And I had to learn that from experience. Like no book would have taught me how to be a good judge of people. Fair point. Yeah, I could see that angle. I think books should be like supplemental. Like you should learn through experience first and then supplement with books and podcasts. I don't think it should be the main thing because people read hundreds of books and they're not successful. Yeah, right.

28:42Like, you know, you could read books about sales. It's not going to tell you how to sell one thing. Or even like in a, you know, like you're not going to read a book about tennis and suddenly be a good tennis player. You have to like swing the racket a bunch of times. Yeah. So, or chess. Like we were talking about chess earlier. I study chess books all the time, but it's mostly now just for pleasure. Like, you know, as opposed to like learning something really new that's going to help me win a game. Yeah. I've accepted that. I don't think I'll ever get past 1600. You never know. Like, it's just a matter of like - I would have to spend money and hire a coach.

29:14Yeah. I'm saying like on my own, because I'm self-taught from YouTube videos. I don't think, I think my peak is like 13, 1400. on her. Which is really good. It's decent. It's like top 5%. But unless I like devoted a lot of my life towards it, I don't think like I do it on the side. Yeah. Like you could, you would only do it more than that. If you, if you loved it, like if like every waking moment and you know, when I was a kid, there was a period where every waking moment I had to play chess. Like I would, I would not go to school for like days or even weeks at a time just to, just to play all day.

29:44You go on the streets in New York city, just hustling. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not necessarily hustling, sometimes being hustled. But I remember actually down the street from me, there was this guy who was probably a little schizophrenic, like kind of, you know, on some spectrum. And I'm going to say his name in a second, but doxing him, but people already know this. And anyway, I skipped school. He had a PhD in math from Rutgers and, but just was living at home with his parents because that's what was going on. And he would just play chess all day. So I would just go over his house and and played chess all day.

30:17His name was John Nash III, and his dad was the John Nash. So nobody knew who his dad was then. It was just like, oh, I'm going over John's house and playing chess. That's nuts. Yeah. That was your mentor, right? He wasn't necessarily my mentor, but he was a little better than me. We would play in these father-son competitions together, even though he wasn't my dad. Adopted. Yeah. And we just had a fun time just analyzing the game and playing games all day. And back then, you didn't have the AI to analyze the games. Now I play a game on chess.com and it shows me what I did wrong immediately. Yeah, now it's funny, which makes the game less social.

30:52Like you used to play games with people and then you could talk to them about it. Now I don't want to talk to you. I'm just going to go up to my hotel room and I'm going to analyze the game there. Like I don't care about your analysis. I just care about the computer's analysis. Yeah, so I'm a fan of the mental side of sports. I consider chess a sport. Do you think table talk should be allowed in a chess setting? In a tournament, probably not. but definitely like in blitz and casual chess. Yeah, I agree. Cause I think that's an edge. If you're good at talking, like it could help you win games. Oh yeah.

31:20Like in Washington square park and the city, as I was growing up, like that's how people would play. And you know, the mental side of chess, I was just talking about this with my coach, actually the mental side of chess, it's gotta be at least 50, 60 % of the game. Wow. Not necessarily like whether I'm going to beat someone who's, let's say a beginner or whatever, but at my, if you're playing someone you're rating, then whether you win or not, 50 or 60 % of that's got to be mental. Yeah, because you're the same skill level. Yeah. So what separates you? You know, it could be some piece of knowledge you know that the other person doesn't.

31:53But let's say you start losing. There's a difference between the kind of person who really kicks in when they're losing. And this is true for business too. The kind of person who kicks in when they're losing and the kind of person who says, oh, there I go again. I'm such a loser. Right. Like that will affect whether you see certain moves later on in the game. Like the last tournament I played in And my coach was so upset at me. He's like, every single game, you had a winning move after you were losing. And you didn't see any of them. Because you just shut down? Yeah, I just shut down. So I lost most of my games because I was just self-talk.

32:27I couldn't get out of the self-talk. And I try really hard. I know how important mindset is. But for whatever reason, this particular tournament, it didn't kick in at all. That's interesting. I wonder if that's like a... Because a lot of the stuff I'm learning now comes from childhood, like all your traumas in adult life. So I wonder if when you were growing up, you had some self-doubt issues or something probably yeah yeah and and i mean i remember again i took a break from playing chess for for something like 25 years so i played as a kid and then as soon as i hit like the master level i stopped because i knew this was going to be good for business like it's good because it has chess is such a cultural impact it's good to be able to say oh i'm a chess master also like there's always some effect and uh so i stopped playing completely And then more recently I've started again, like an idiot thinking I'm going to be as good as I was then.

33:16And, uh, you know, I would though, I wouldn't be, if I lost a single game in a tournament when I was in, I wouldn't be able to go to school the next day. Like I was so upset at myself and I probably never really got over that feeling of just being disappointed in myself with a loss.

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37:04And I would take a video of every single time and I would look at it. And particularly when I did poorly and then you say, oh, okay, this is why they didn't laugh. Or this joke's not funny. Or I said too many ums and ahs. Or I, or I spoke over the laughs. I couldn't really get to the real punchline. And so you see, you have to analyze the things you do. Even in business, you have to analyze post-mortems or investments. You can never, the worst words are to say, oh, I just got unlucky or the other person just got lucky. Yeah. Like then you ruin it. Wow. So that actually worked with comedy though.

37:32You felt like you got better doing it. Oh yeah. Cause then you know which jokes, A, which jokes work and which don't. You know, oh, I wasn't taking care of this part of the audience. Like this part of the crowd. I was focusing too much on this part of the crowd. This part of the crowd was ignoring me. And so I didn't sense that during the performance. Or I talked too fast during this one part. Or I didn't really commit to the joke. You could see I'm nervous. In comedy, the audience is an x-ray machine, and they know when you're just performing as opposed to saying something real to them. So if I could see that in my videos of myself, then I know the audience could see it.

38:14So you have to really analyze. That's interesting, because to me, I always thought being funny was something you had or not, but you're saying you trained it? Oh, yeah, because you have to... Okay, being funny, maybe that is something that's either natural or not, But for comedy, there's so many other skills too. There's storytelling. There's how you move your voice. There's how you play with the crowd. There's how you use the mic, how you play with the stage. Like there's all these other, what I call micro skills. Like it's like business too. There's no one skill like, oh, I have business skill.

38:46There's sales, marketing, management, product execution, you know, all sorts of other, you know, there's raising money. That's an entire skill. There's how you value your company and your efforts. That's a skill. So there's all these like sub skills to business. You know, writing's the same way. There's skills with storytelling, skills with the actual poetry of your words. There's skills with, you know, how do you structure an idea, how you weave an idea through a story. So there's all these different sub skills. And all these things that people think are mega skills are really just, you know, collections of micro skills.

39:21Yeah. And do you recommend when people are starting out to learn one skill at a time just to hone in on one? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you an example, which is kind of a frowned upon example. But one of my daughters was going to do an open mic just for fun. And so I said, here's what you should do. And no one else is going to give you this advice is steal a bunch of jokes from your favorite comedian and then do those jokes. Because then you've isolated, you know the joke works. So that part you've isolated. And now you can see if your performance skills, what aspect of your performance skills need to be better.

39:52But if you just go up there and try to write your own jokes and you just hear the first time you're going up there You won't know which part is bad. You don't know. Oh, you need to be a better joke writer You need to be funnier you need or is it was it just something you did in the performance? Yeah So you won't be able to isolate the skill That's definitely a hot take because I know comedians hate when you take their jokes. Yeah Yeah, no, and I don't think any comedian would give that advice, but that's why okay Let's say you're a public speaker Do the same thing steal like jokes from your best comedian and i'm not saying do this every time I'm just saying as you're getting better, as you're developing the skill.

40:23You want to be funny, don't worry about the joke part. There's so many other parts that you need to work on also. Did you know public speaking is the number one fear in the world? Yeah. Crazy, right? I think Jerry Seinfeld has the joke where he says people are more afraid to be speaking at the funeral than to be the dead person at the funeral. Yeah, it's so weird to me. But I think it kind of makes sense because like being in public school, I hated it. So I think you're kind of low-key taught to hate it growing up. Yeah, and also I think it's an evolutionary thing. like you know if you're seen as weak in the tribe they may kick you out of the tribe and then you're dead right so and public speaking you're exposing yourself completely and if you could be seen as weak so it's just that's why it's this prime almost like fear like death i think i think it's this evolutionary thing is that why you wanted to get in comedy to get over that fear i just loved comedy but yeah i was so afraid so actually i was um doing a podcast with steven dumner one of the authors of Freakonomics and we challenged each other to rent out a hall in New York City and do stand-up for five minutes each.

41:23And we did it. And I was so scared. I wasn't even going to show up. I was literally like, I couldn't handle it. But then I did it and I thought to myself, oh my God, that was just the best thing ever. And so I got obsessed. And I would say for the next five or six years after that, that's all I did was stand-up comedy. Like I, all day I would like watch comedians just to learn. And then at night I would find different comedy clubs who would let me perform. And then until eventually I bought a comedy club, which is the worst investment ever. And, and then I would do it every night and I sucked for a long time.

42:00And then I would say I got, I got mediocre. I got good enough where I could like other clubs would ask me to perform around the country. I did some stuff internationally. Like, I got okay. Not, like, great. Yeah. You got top 1 % on stuff. Yeah, I got top 1%. It's pretty good in comedy. Because in comedy, apparently, you got to devote 10 years, they say. Oh, yeah. I would say, look at all the comedians that are even, like, the next generation after, like, let's say, the Louis C.K.'s and Chris Rocks. Like, let's say, Andrew Schultz, Chris Dostofano, Theo Bond. I would say they're the next generation after, like, Louis C.K., Chris Rocks.

42:32All of them, a minimum. You only heard about them after they were doing it for about 15 years. Yeah. And that's amplified even faster because of social media too. Yeah. If they didn't have that, it would have taken probably 20, 30 years. And podcasts also helped them. Like take someone like Tim Dillon. He was already like a great comedian, but nobody knew who he was. He was just like a local comedian in New York City. But the podcast really put him above the top. Yeah. I think comedy podcasts are number two out of every category. Yeah. And I would bet there, I mean, what's first? Is like true crime?

42:59I think it's true crime, yeah. Yeah. So I would bet you that true crime during the pandemic, maybe comedy probably tipped to number one a little bit and then you know but because joe rogan's a comedian as well and so um but like the ovan chris dostofino tim dylan they're they're great podcasters and it's because of their comedy skills what show is your category in uh i don't even know because what category is your show and i said that i think i think it went back and forth for a while between business but then they realized i hardly had any businessmen on and then it would being like self-help, but I wasn't really, I wrote books that were categorized in the self-help category.

43:33And, and I kept trying to tell people I'm really more self-hurt, but, but, but, you know, it became self-help. So it was, it goes back and forth between those categories. I've been in those two too. I started with marketing business, self-help. Now I'm in education. I don't, I have so many different guests. It's hard to know. Yeah. Same with me. It's more, more general. Yeah. It's more like, who do I think is interesting? Yeah. That's exactly what I do. Do you ever worry that that makes you too general? I do. It is an issue because some people say to niche down, but I'm doing this for fun. Like the pot, it makes good money too, but like, I don't care about sponsors or whatever.

44:06I've lost a ton of sponsors. I've lost guests having on controversial people, but it's part of the game. Yeah. And you know, it's so funny. Like people, when you have controversial people on, like, I think you and I both have had like on Andrew Tate, for instance, It's, okay, who cares that I spoke to somebody for 45 minutes or an hour? You know, if you don't want to listen to somebody, just don't listen to that episode. Facts. But don't judge me. Like, I'm not giving an opinion. Even if I gave an opinion, who cares? Like, I have some good opinions. People like some, they don't. Like, everybody hates each other now.

44:37No, it's very divisive. And the argument I hear is like, why are you platforming this person? Yeah. But I don't like that argument because half the time they have a bigger platform than me. Right. It doesn't even make sense to me. Right. Like, yeah, I'm really, you know, delivering Andrew Tate's message to the world. Like, he should thank God for me because finally now the world hears who he is. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like that. I'm big on free speech. Like, you decide how you feel, but why do you have the need to mass report my account? Like, I'm banned on TikTok right now. Oh, I didn't know that.

45:05Yeah. Lost it last month. Trying to get it back. But yeah, politics is a very, people just report you if they don't agree with you. Yeah, and like, what was it? Do you know what was it that - It was the Israel stuff. you know yeah so the thing is i have on both sides but if one side only sees one certain clip they'll just mass report it get my account banned i mean and look that's one of those issues too where there's by the way there's a million war situations happening around the world but everyone is like fixed on that one war situation and probably like people on on every side have some degree of misinformation so it's hard to really know what's truth the history is very complicated.

45:42If you say, oh, this started here. No, it really, someone else could say, no, it started 10 years earlier. And so, and then no one's ever going to agree. No one's going to change their mind. So, you know, so, so what's the point of, you know, I could see if somebody says, you know, death to all this group or death to all this group, that's extreme. But, you know, for everything else, it's just, it's just kind of, I don't want to say it's entertainment because that makes a mockery of it, but I don't know. You know, it's just hard to really know. Well, political commentary has turned into entertainment at this point.

46:14There's no doubt. Like, if you watch Pierce Morgan and you watch some of these political commentary shows, it's just a screaming match. It's just, like, stirring up drama. Yeah, and, like, and again, who are they convincing? Like, what good are they doing in the world? Yeah. So. I think politics is, I think many people focus on it, and it's not worth the time they're putting in. Like, I sort of miss 2012 in the sense that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, they were the same person, actually. Pretty much. Like, you know, the issue was Obamacare, but Mitt Romney was the one who was the test. When he was governor of Massachusetts, he created Romneycare.

46:49It was the same thing. So they were not really different. Nobody was going to stop any war that was going on. They were both in favor of all the wars that were happening. And so it was sort of like a pleasant time to focus on other things other than politics. I agree. I think when Trump ran the first time, he just brought a whole new set of eyeballs into the politics, right? Right. And look, he was funny. It was just a little different. That's what won him the election. Yeah, exactly. And people were like, oh, okay, this stands out. It's not just like every single other person saying the exact same thing.

47:21It was funny. It was entertaining. And that's what it still is. Yeah. Are you still in Jersey? I know you were growing up in North Brunswick. Yeah, no. I lived my whole adult life in New York City. Most recently, though, I've been living a little outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Just wanted some peace and quiet. Yeah. Some land, finally. Yeah, some land. I didn't want to smell things all day long. There's like studies on life expectancy. Have you seen these? No. For people that live in major cities, especially New York. It's like a few years lower than the average. That's really interesting. It's all the pollution and I guess the, I don't know if you believe in this, but like the Wi-Fi and the 5G towers and all that stuff.

47:56I would believe that the pollution, because it really does smell different in New York City. So like I would believe that. And of course, I would also believe, I don't know how crime is related to, like nobody gets murdered in my town. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. So some, some might be, some of those statistics might factor in like murders, although there really isn't that many murders and there's more just like violent crimes more than murders. But, uh, yeah, but you know what? Here's the thing about New York City though. It's very stressful. It's a hard place to live. Like you can't, you can't live in a nice apartment, for instance, unless you have a lot of money.

48:27It's just a fact. Yeah. It's like 10K a month, right? Yeah. Like to get a, to get an acceptable apartment is like almost minimum that. Otherwise you can have roommates or it's a little too small for you and your wife and two kids. And so, you know, and I think also it's a very transactional city. Like everybody, because everybody's hungry there, it's, if you do something for, everybody's doing something for everybody else, but it's in a very transactional way, which I didn't like. I think that's most cities these days, right? Because of social media too. Yeah. Yeah, my plan is to like, because obviously we need to be close to a major city for what we do with the podcast.

49:03So my plan is to like to have a getaway and just go back and forth when I get stressed. Oh, the funny thing is Las Vegas is like a getaway. Like if you go outside, you've got the beautiful desert like just minutes from here. Yeah, it's pretty. I like Vegas a lot, honestly. It's hard to be Vegas because you get good bang for your buck out here too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Even like staying in hotels and stuff is like one third the price of New York City. Yeah, I do a staycation every three months. There's so many hotels out here, man. Which one are you up? I'm at the, I think it's pronounced Verada, Vedara.

49:30Oh, Vedara. Vedara, yeah. That's next to Aria. Yeah, I didn't want to stay at a casino. You know, so I just hated it. You got a gambling addiction? Well, I used to play a lot of poker, and I just don't want to be any, I'm just not interested at all in being tempted by anything. Did you get wrecked? No, I actually, it was one of those things that I got obsessed with. So I did the usual things. It was the only thing I could function at. Like, I would do it all day long. I would study it. I would memorize out all the statistics. I had a coach. And then all night, from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., every single night, I would play.

50:02like 365 straight days, like a year. And my, my wife would even tell her friends, look, at least I know where he is and he's not like cheating or something. So she didn't mind. And I would say, again, it was one of those things where at first I was bad. And then I got probably pretty good, you know, again, good enough that I could, I could handle myself in Atlantic city, couldn't quite handle myself in Las Vegas, but I think Las Vegas had the best players in the world. We still do. Yeah. And so, and you have to be very honest with where your skillset is. probably if I kept working at it, it would have been good.

50:34And then what really got me wrecked is I decided to be an entrepreneur again and then I got wrecked. Poker's a very interesting game because you could be really good but still lose. Yeah. Like a lot of money. You got to pick the right games. You know what I mean? You can't let your ego get in the way. Yeah. There's a great player, Gus Hansen, who went all the way to tens of millions, all the way back down to zero, I think. I think he's like an accountant somewhere now. And that's common with a lot of the poker guys. and that's really the depressing part about losing money it's better to not have a lot of money than to have it and then lose it because it's hard to go back to where you were once you get a taste of it because i grew up pretty like broke honestly like zero to 20 yeah um just relying on my parents and then i didn't i wasn't depressed i mean i was but that was college that was different but then when i lost all my money that's the worst that was rough yeah like like when i was when I first as an adult moved to New York City, then you're hungry, then you're curious, then you're finding out where all the opportunities are.

51:33And then as you're growing for the first time, it's like, oh my gosh, I could buy a vacation. I could buy a television set. I could afford these things. And it feels so good. There's so much dopamine. And then you get clients, your universe expands. You realize, oh, I could actually be successful. And you believe in yourself at that point. And then the first time you lose everything and happens to everybody, first time you lose everything, it's just the worst feeling in the world. You feel like you won the lottery and you're never going to be able to win the lottery again. And you don't know how you're going to get out of it.

52:04And now at the very least, I've gone, I've made money and gone broke so many times that I, even though it's still depressing, I tell myself, okay, I know I've been here before. I know I'm going to get out of this if I just stay positive. Because you got the skillset and the mindset. that. Yeah. And I have to remind myself of it because it still feels depressing. And I still have to tell myself I've got to do things. I've got to keep writing these 10 ideas a day, keep it healthy. Now I'm in the Olympics because now if I don't do everything right, I'm going to just stay broke. And so that's what keeps me going.

52:39But I know I can do it again. There's three skills to money. And they're completely different skills. There's making it, keeping it, growing it. So for a long time, I realized I was good at making it, but I was horrible at keeping it and growing it. What do you think is the hardest out of the three? I don't know, because I think in general, people think making it is the hardest, but for me, keeping it was really hard. I agree. I think making it for me is the easiest, but for most people, it's the hardest. Yeah. Because you have to know how to do things. You have to have some talent at doing things, and then you have to get very quickly good at the things that you're bad at, or at least know what you need.

53:18Like for instance, I know I'm a poor judge of people. So I don't try to make decisions unless I have a second or third opinion on the people I'm doing deals with. So you have to know where you're weak so you could try to get stronger at it or at least hire for that. That makes sense. And then keeping it, that's just a matter of controlling your vices. Yeah, and understanding risk too. Like I would take enormous risks that I should not have with money that I had worked really hard to make. Right. So then you can make some risk. You have to, but I can't take too much risk. Yeah, that was my issue too.

53:54I invested all over the place and stuff I knew nothing about. That's how I lost it. Right, people think it's like, oh, did you spend money on like drugs and hookers? No, it was really just trying to, I had 10 million trying to make 100 million is the mistake I made. I've never been able to make that jump. Yeah, no, I'm, you know, without saying too much, I have not been able to make that jump either. I don't, I also think the jumps don't hit the same, if that makes sense. Like zero to a hundred K was crazy. I felt like a baller, like in college, making that money, a hundred K to a million felt really good.

54:25A million to 10 was, was all right. But like now I feel like money has kind of lost its, I don't know how to word it. Yeah. I mean, now it's right because that's why you could, that's why now, well, first off, when you have like a good number, it's easier to make and lose millions and it's not going to affect you as personally. Although I try to have it affect me so that I still feel that hunger. Right. Like, and I always remind myself of, you know, other people who I'm responsible for and other obligations I have. And usually you're not in a, in a world by yourself. Like, let's say you make a lot of money on a business.

55:00There's employees, there's investors, there's customers, and you're doing something for all of them. They all depend on you. So I try to, I try to always make the stakes very high. I like that. Yeah, when I used to like, I guess, make money, it impacted my lifestyle a lot. Like when I was first buying a house and doing all that stuff. But now when I make more money, there's not much I can buy that's going to change my happiness and fulfillment. You know what I mean? When you first made a lot of money, how were your relationships? Really bad. Really? Terrible, yeah. Because I was all in on making money.

55:29I was obsessed like you were. Yeah, and then did you lose a lot of relationships? Yeah, tons. Now I'm like rebuilding them, I'd say. Yeah, I feel like that's a good thing. It's always a process for me. Because also along the way, different people, they react to you and they don't really know why they're reacting to you. But a little bit is obviously jealousy and a little bit might be their own personal frustrations. And also sometimes if you're always the hero for somebody and then suddenly you're distracted and you're not the hero for them anymore, they could get very disappointed. Yeah. Yeah.

55:59I sacrificed a lot to get early success relationships. My physical health was shit. My mental health was awful. I wouldn't recommend it, honestly. For most people, I barely made it through. I was in the ER, like it wasn't fun. Yeah, it's not fun. I had panic attacks all the time. But what is worth it that is also fun? Because let's just take even like, you know, something trivial, like stand-up comedy or playing a game or I'm not going to say writing a book, but none of these things are fun. Like getting great at something is not fun. Valid. There's pleasure in improvement. and there's, my problem is I think I don't know how to enjoy things unless I'm improving.

56:39I kind of have to get better at enjoying things just for the sake of it. Same. Because I think if you're not improving, you're declining. So for me, I have to constantly be improving. Yeah. Or else it kind of loses flair. But, but I'm, I'm told that's a big mistake in life. It gets to a point where you can't improve because you're so at the top that in order to improve, you would have to like go even more all in, you know? Yeah. So diminishing returns, I think that's what they call it. Yeah. And that's painful. Yeah, it is. I mean, think of these guys. We were talking earlier about the top 10 in tennis.

57:08And I know this for a fact. Like, let's say in the top, let's say 10 or 20 in the chess world. Unless you're like the number one guy, you know, which is Magnus Carlsen. The rest of them are all, I would say, mildly depressed. Yeah, because they don't make money. Yeah. And also, they're just, they're so great. Like, they're the best in history by far. And yet, they're not the best. It is crazy. that comparison game that we all play. And social media plays a role in that too, I think. Yeah, like, look, social media is so hierarchical that, you know, and look, every day I'll do it. Like two people follow me.

57:40Okay, I'll follow the person back with more followers. Like it's just very hierarchical. And so that's, if you really, like I remember in like, let's say 2010, so I'm a bit older, when I was really first trying to get followers on social media, and I would say I'm not as obsessed with that now, but if there was a day where I didn't like increase followers, I would be getting a little depressed. So even though it's so not important. But then later on, it's like not important to me now. I'm glad it's lost meaning, to be honest. Followers only matter now for getting DMs, but they don't matter to get views.

58:10Yeah, because the algorithm now is better. It's way better. I love it. I get more views from non-followers on my show. Yeah. And when you're looking on your feeds, do you ever look at the for you? Or do you look at that? Or you don't look at the followed. You look at the for you. Only for you. Yeah. I don't want to see what people I'm following propose. What the hell? Yeah, exactly. I already know what they do. And they're not superheroes. I'd rather look at the Gen Z superheroes on TikTok. They're just posting their highlights. Oh, you had an interesting take on Gen Z. So you think they're the most superior generation?

58:38By far. I can't believe every day when I look at social media, like let's say Instagram, you see anything like a skateboarder skateboarding off of a mountain, doing a flip, and then potentially dying or landing exactly right. I mean, do these people die? I don't think they're all fake. Like, I think some of these people are like amazingly skilled. Yeah, rarely, but yeah. There, there's some pretty insane videos. I think it's a very talented generation. I know they get a lot of hate, but. And like, if you see like on music, like piano, for instance, there are some of these Gen Z kids are so amazingly talented and skilled or, you know, anything.

59:16Like any skill you could possibly think of, it's Gen Z already has the, it used to be that the older people were the best in the world. Now the Gen Z, there's somebody who's Gen Z, who's the best in the world at almost every skill imaginable. I would even say like math or physics, like something that you wouldn't expect. You need to be a little older. This already Gen Z is already, somebody Gen Z is already the best in the world at it. Yeah, I think it's the access to information because it's so easy to learn these days. And maybe they're better at learning too, like just learning quickly because they're so used to it.

59:46Well, I know I am now with AI. I'm learning so fast these days. Yeah, if you're interested in anything with AI and if you're, the great thing with AI is you don't have to be embarrassed about any questions that you ask. You could ask the stupidest questions in the world. Like, look, I've been talking about Bitcoin and doing crypto stuff since 2013. And the other day, I asked AI, hey, can you explain to me again what blockchain is? Like, you could ask just the dumbest question. You don't have to be afraid. Like, hey, weren't you supposed to know that already? Yeah, no judgment. No judgment. Yeah, that's a good point, man.

1:00:16Well, James, this has been super fun. I can't wait to do another episode with you one of these days. Where can people find your show and everything? James Altucher's show. or listen to me here on Sean's excellent show. So anywhere you want to find me, you can find me. We'll have to play chess, but you can't start with a queen to make it fair. How about I'll do blindfold? Oh, that'd be fun. Let's do it. I've been practicing that lately. That's my training now. One game a day blindfold. Let's do it. All right, man. Check them out. See you next time. Peace. Thanks.

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