How To Take Control Of Your Financial Health To Create Lasting Abundance

27:39Honestly, this is going to sound silly, but like lawn care. How many lawns are out there? You have a lawn? I have like a fake yard, yeah. It's a lot of water here in California. So, yeah. True. Do you have a pool? I do. Yeah. Pool care. And how much do you pay your pool care person? Oh, 100 bucks a week. It's a week. Weekly, yeah. Yeah. So, 400 bucks a month. Yeah. So, that's$5 ,000 a year. You get 50 pools. It's like, hey. That's a million dollar opportunity. And then, so you realize like pools and certain things like can be billion dollar markets. And most people, and this is something I had to recognize through.

28:08The boring businesses. Boring businesses is not, and it's not just boring. It's just billion dollar opportunities. like and john paul de joie was a great one that i sound fascinating because he's like find something that's in the reorder business too so not just a billion dollar market like shampoo billion dollar market but people need to buy your product over and over and over again so i think there's something fascinating is that a billion dollar market is a product that people need like pool care doesn't have to just be tech i come from tech world but there's a lot of different businesses out there to be creating like you can make money in a lot of different ways and that's been also fascinating with talking to all these people yeah from ships to basements like there's just so many different ways right a lot of ways i'm curious i think it was one of the interviews i saw from you where you're interviewing some guy maybe you'll remember who this is and you ask him like what's your definition of success and he said something like as an adult my adult kids still want to hang out with me on their own not because i have money because they just like me yeah and i was like man that really hit me.

29:07And I don't know, was that from your, one of your, the founder of FedEx, the founder of Kinkos, Kinkos. Kinkos. Yeah. So do you remember what that, what that was or what that question was? I don't know if that was the exact question or what he said, but do you remember that? Yeah. I remember him. The other person I think of when I think of success, I asked the founder of Strava, you know, Strava, it's a cycling tracking app. It's like social network for cyclists. And this is the most unique one. I don't know if he, I don't think he's a billionaire, which is totally great. He's still doing really well.

29:32It's an amazing app, big business. And I asked him I was like what success he's like not waking up to an alarm that ones I never forgot because it's such a it means you have freedom of your time you're a time millionaire and the fact that you're like I can wake up whenever I want and do the things I really want in my day that is to me I like okay I like that level of success yeah that's interesting yeah and the other guy was the the founder of kinko's or his founder of kinko's and yeah I mean what was shocking about his story he sold his company 2.4 billion become a billionaire and the disappointing part he was awesome and I really admire him um Mr.

30:06Ophelia uh but he said he was stressed for 34 years he's like every day I'm stressed building that business yeah he's like is it gonna work am I have a payroll do I have to do this thing I have to fly that stuff and I remember just being like I don't want that and that's the coolest part about life I can look at Lewis I can look at Noah I can check him out I can be like whose haircut do I want to try and guess what you create your own you take all these different ones and you get a piece together the haircut you want to actually wear yeah so I like seeing that I was like I don't want to live that life I'm happy making less money but doing it the way I want yeah but for 20 years you lived a certain level of life building your business making money and there was anxiety and stress around that for a long time right when did you realize like okay this level of stress and you know emotional overwhelm and just like always needing to get bigger and bigger and bigger when did you realize that no longer works for you and that you wanted to shift it yeah maybe you knew from the beginning it doesn't work but you were still doing it but when did you realize okay this is not how i want to live the rest of my life yeah what i for me i'm 41 and i think you have to be stressed in your 20s if you there's a part of stress that's good it's not always a bad thing i think so you have the book out there outside of stress so in 20s you're figuring out your life and you're just working yourself you know really what's happening.

31:29And in your 30s, you're kind of a little more clear. You're like, okay, I like maybe YouTube. I like promoting products. And then your 40s, for me, I find it calm. And that just takes time to find out who we really are and be patient with some process that eventually we will figure it out. And for me, COVID, I would say is when I finally found more peace. Really? Yeah. When most people found more stress, you found peace. Why did COVID bring you peace? Because I recognized that how I was approaching business, I had a plane. I was like here's what we're going to be doing here's our budget here's our business and I have a plan that I can follow so I was part one and part two is I didn't really like how I was living I was engaged and it didn't work out really yeah you know I had my business partner had a line he was recommend he said to me he's like are you getting what you're getting are you getting what you want from the relationship yeah not not for as a business partner right right shout out Chad he's amazing from the so you're engaged maybe there were some ups and downs you weren't like fully clear.

32:23Yeah. Yeah. And he asked you that question. Yeah. Are you getting what you're getting? Are you getting what you want? And what was the answer? I'm not getting what I want. And that's hard, right? I think most of us, this is the thing I've noticed about advice, especially watching interviews and interviewing people. Most of us know the truth. We know our truth. It's just hard and we don't want to accept it. Yeah. Everyone has courage. Like I did this ayahuasca thing, which I know is more common now, but I did it years ago and courage to me was I was afraid of it uh-huh but i did it anyways and then i was still scared and there was a whole crazy story about this but coming out of it i was like oh i realized i can do hard things and all of us can do hard things but we have to face the hard thing yes and we all have it in us and so for me with breaking up with the fiance which was tough and i do what was that like that was probably one of the more bigger regrets in my life uh that i didn't do it sooner because i wasted her time wasted my time uh yeah that's tricky it was two years of just like back and everyone's gone through this it's not unique for me but it was two years of um okay let's try to make it work but i know i'm not really good for you and i don't feel good about myself and so it was like eventually when when covid happened that was that was kind of our um we had some some issues that went down and i was like i can't do this like i i can't spend it was this was everything i thought i was like do i want 40 more years of this oh man yeah that's that was it was tough and i it's interesting i asked myself a question in a previous relationship before.

33:46I think Esther Perel said something like, can you see yourself having 10 ,000 meals with this person? If you're going to have 10 ,000 meals with the person, do you see yourself enjoying those meals, having fun, or is it more stressful? Yeah. And I mean, all that added up. I mean, even doing this book, Million Dollar Weekend, or YouTube and stuff, nothing was wrong, but she is not... With our relationship, She did not get excited. Like, I want to go to YouTube. I like attention. And my partner now with Moffat, she's like, go on YouTube. Have fun with Lewis. Like she's, and for me that worked. And my ex will find a partner that's better.

34:19And so with COVID, it was like having a plan of business, breaking up with the fiance. And then I think the other part that was kind of interesting was experimenting with life. There's a scene with business. It's an experiment. It's all an experiment. It's a game. Yeah. And I experimented just different ways of living. I experimented finally living kind of rich. Like I had money, but I never enjoyed it. Really? Yeah, I think we're all taught that money can't buy happiness and that you're like, you know, you shouldn't be buying these things and don't live this way. And most of the ones who are showing that stuff are actually probably not, don't have the money for it.

34:48They're not poor, but like they probably don't have the money. Right. Most rich people don't need to be posting about it. Right. And so I started, I rented a Malibu beach house. I rented a lake house in Austin. I started doing these things. I got like an RV for a month and I just kind of like drove around and like hung out the RV. And I was like, wow, having some nicer space to live makes me feel a lot better. And so those kind of things led me in a direction where single for a while, started doing dating coaches, had a business plan that I was executing for AppSumo. So I felt in control of the business.

35:18And then I felt like I'm actually going to start taking care of myself. And then I also felt like I could take care of others then too, as I was feeling better about myself. And that thing past three years, I felt much, just been much calmer. what what has money and relationships taught you about when you've been in a relationship that you weren't fully sure of was going to work out what was your views around money during that time were you more anxious and stressed were you more abundant thinking like where were you at with money it's easy to be abundant when you have money i'll tell you that it's hard when you and that's what most people they're struggling with money that's why i'm like let's talk about entrepreneurship because that's a way of you can changing your situation which everyone can do And I had a friend who said, no, you're here and you're here where you want to be.

36:01And it's actually closer than you think. I was like, really? He's like, yeah, it's much closer than you think. You thought it was a bigger gap. I thought it's a gap. I thought there's something I don't know. I thought there's something outside. And it's something I think we're both, as we've gotten older, it's all inside. Yeah. Just being kind of like, hey, it's okay. Yeah, of course. It's okay. Now, with my ex, it was not that there was a good or bad thing about money. It was just how we treated each other with it. Like, I didn't really spend a lot of money on myself. So, what did you do with your money?

36:26because you were making money every year was it just compounding in a bank account was it in stocks what were you doing yeah my father built his own business and then lost it to drugs and alcohol and it was it was a sad like that's definitely for me i think a lot of a lot of men we want our fathers to recognize us and i was fortunate i have a great mom and a great step father but for me that that father attachment yes um and i think with growing up with jewish parents candidly like we're taught to be very frugal we're taught to be very practical and it's just like go make money and that that's a thing versus like all right how do you enjoy life and I think with my ex it wasn't she kind of made me feel bad about it like why don't you spend money or we go to the airport it's like five dollars for a bottle of water I'm like I'm gonna go to the bathroom and drink from the faucet like right right or like I'm just like five bucks it's fine I don't care and I'm there's still times but over time you start spending in different things like I bought a fancy Jaguar I had so much regret on it yes you did oh yeah I hated it I hated it I dude I oh man it was the worst because I don't care about nice cars I have a 2004 Miata uh-huh I just got a new Vespa.

37:24There you go. That's the second. I do have a model Y, but it was not important to me. And I think that was interesting where she wasn't, and for both of us, she wasn't like, hey. She was like, you're being cheap. I was like, okay. You know, it kind of like felt deflated versus, I was like, hey, why don't we, do you want to try spending these things? Can we rent it for a day? Right, right, right. So I think there was ways of actually being more positive to each other with money. Right. Wow. Do you believe in practicing gratitude and manifesting and the law of attraction? and if if so has that has that helped you attract more in the life you want i'll tell you the part that's counterintuitive for me so every day i write down something i'm grateful and almost everything i'm grateful for is silly like to me it's like i'm grateful for electricity i'm grateful for water yeah hot water just i think that's silly man yeah those are the ones those are the ones i really love because it's um it's available and it's not realizing how great life really is for all of us it really i mean if you're able to watch this life's probably pretty good yes doesn't make feel good in this moment or you don't have the money but that's also something you could change um in terms of having candidly i i don't think i always felt worthy of what of like having certain things like having a wife or having a partner or having a kid um and even with facebook and stuff like that i felt like well zuck fired me i'm not worthy of having a business really yeah i felt like oh this guy knows something better than i don't and i think a lot of us feel that way like oh these other people have these things am i actually worthy of this stuff And how do we, you know, you talk about gratitude and vision.

38:51I think everyone can spend more time just being grateful for themselves. And how do we just actually give more kindness to ourselves? So one thing that I work on, anytime I'm kind of criticizing myself, it's like, all right, let's say one nice thing. And it kind of, what's crazy is you do that enough times, like criticize, nice thing, criticize. And we are literally the meanest people in the world to ourselves. Like, you know, your worst friend is yourself. And so how do you change that relationship over time? And now it's just kind of like throughout my day, I'm like, dude, good job. job like hey you hung out Lewis great job and the more that we start doing those things I think that's a way that yes you can manifest other things but it's just really how do we work on being nice to ourselves and that that's really helped over time so it sounds like you were pretty self-critical and you didn't feel like you had self-worth or feel like you were worthy for a long time building AppSumo yeah but you still built an 85 million dollar business feeling unworthy yeah feeling underqualified and not fully loving and accepting yourself is that right yeah on a scale of one to ten of self-worth where would you say you were for most of those years the first 10 years of building app sumo yeah one being you have very little self-worth and don't believe you're deserving of any of it the money the success the love and 10 being you're deserving of all that where were you for most of those years literally until probably the past year is just very low like uh it's still let's talk about the book uh no no this is good uh man probably until literally like two years ago um maybe fours threes fours threes and fours yeah like i was getting partners that would that liked me just because that's what i got uh and then with app sumo i think i had this fear i'm gonna ruin this business so i i try to pass it off and not do it And even with this book, I had to go through my own journey of, okay, I'm going to hire Tel Ra as one of the best business writers in the world and I don't have to face myself.

40:40And when all of us face these hard things in life, whether it's writing a book, whether it's relationship, whether it's starting putting yourself out there a little bit, and you face some of the fears and you start just even small, the smallest thing. And you're like, maybe I am worthy. Maybe I can do these things. and with AppSumo, when the previous CEO quit and I came back to work, I definitely was like, I'm ruining this business. I'm messing. And I did make a lot of mistakes, but I just stayed with it and I had great people around me. And so over time now I'm like, and I get feedback. One of the easiest things that anyone can do to improve right now, really literally right now is text someone, how can I get better?

41:14Whether it's in your relationship, just ask your partner, whether it's at work as an employee or as a founder. And so it was just through working with people, getting feedback over time. Now I'm like, pretty good at this. I used to always, this is, I haven't really talk to this it sounds small i used to always call myself chief sumo because i never wanted to be a ceo i never thought i was the right leader and in the past 18 months two years now i'm the ceo and so maybe for others out there how are we labeling ourselves yes and what are maybe small steps not that i'd be big like i have to go some dramatic thing that i can just do that makes me feel good about myself that moves me in that direction same with the relationship where i didn't i went i worked with stephanie rig she's a woman out of australia um great on instagram really great content and a lot of what we talked about was like what are you doing that makes you feel good about yourself like you drank last night how did that make you feel like you're doing this type of activity like you're going on this date with a girl you don't want how'd that make you feel like you're showing now with with my partner mafe it's like how am i showing up for her am i actually aligning my priority to my behavior and every time i do that i'm like like i cooked her some food uh two weeks ago i was like i'm proud of myself i'm glad i could take care of you yeah Yeah, I'm really proud of myself.

42:22And all of us feel these different ways. It's not like some exclusive club where everyone's always feeling happy. Yeah. Right? But it's doing things that make us feel good about ourselves that, frankly, it's all within our control. I think over years, you realize it's not external validation. It's like, how do we get more of the internal validation? That internal person that's like, hey, I'm doing pretty damn good myself. And that's okay. Man, this is beautiful. I'm so glad you're talking about this. Have you seen the movie Creed III? I've seen one or two I don't know if I've seen three Creed 3 was the most recent one anyway long story short about it Adonis Creed he's that world champion in all these things has all the money he's in the Hollywood Hills like living the dream you know most famous guy in sports or whatever it is and he's kind of depressed he's like not boxing anymore he's not like just kind of sitting around depressed and someone from his past comes into his life out of prison, right?

43:22Someone from his past comes. And there was some darkness that they both went through, which caused this person to go to prison that Adonis, the main character, never faced. And he was kind of always running from his pain, his past. You talked about facing yourself. I'm curious, what was the thing that you had to face that was the hardest thing in the last couple of years that allowed you to have more peace and more freedom in yourself and around money, love, and relationships? Different things, man. It doesn't happen all at once. Like even taking Million Dollar Weekend as an example, you know, I've worked for Zuckerberg.

43:57I helped start Mint.com. Like I've started so many different businesses that have made millions of dollars and I still felt afraid. Like, can I put a book out there that people actually want? And can I actually even help them? And so I thought by hiring someone who's like the best around the world, I cold emailed him. Like, can you work on me with this book he's like sure and so paid him money and i was like okay good at least i don't have to do it i don't have to face myself to see if i can actually write a book and then as the book got closer to having to submit the manuscript as you know it goes i was i was like this is not i have to face myself with this book i have to see if i can really do it what did you not face actually writing a lot we wrote the book together but it was like is this the book that i want to put my name on is this a book that i can say hey if you're trying to start a business there's some things about starting building and growing that I can help you with.

44:39And so I had to face the book, I had to face myself and actually writing the book. And yes, I worked on it, you know, lightly about a distance. And I think a lot of us do that. It's like, okay, well, let me avoid that thing. Let me avoid the relationship. Let me maybe avoid the work. And so then I basically like, I don't know if I call it hermit mode, but basically like sat in my room and more or less for about a month, just like heads down, worked with beta readers. And then I was like working on the scripts and all these things. And I was like, slowly. And then I was going with people. So every week we have five people going through the book at a guy living at my house about a month ago.

45:13And through doing it, I was like, oh, I can do this. I can do this. This works. And that's, we all feel that. We all feel that in a lot of different ways, maybe in a relationship, maybe it's with work, maybe it's with ourselves. And so kind of this, this concept lately I've been really, really embracing is like, what's the hard thing I'm avoiding and how do I go into that? And so I voted the book for a while of it. And then I was like, no, I'm gonna go full in. same with absolutely CEO I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it I wanted someone else to do it and same thing when he quit when I was on a bike ride I was biking across America and he quit and uh I didn't want to come back and one of my best friends was like well who's paying for the bike trip I was like absolutely he's like well you should probably and the guy who's running it doesn't want to be there so I came back and had to face that and you know the same experience like it's surprising how much we're afraid of things.

46:01And when you finally do it, you're like, it wasn't as hard as I thought. And I'm much more capable than I realized. And that's true for everyone. And it's just thinking about what these things are. Wow. What's, what's been scarier recommitting to owning your CEO role in a business that you helped build coming back to that and taking ownership or getting out of a relationship that wasn't working to enter a new relationship and now have a baby on the way they're both insanely hard um both insanely hard yeah absolutely it was definitely some of the hardest work i've ever done and i would say by being an entrepreneur though i feel lucky i feel like it's the hardest thing but this is the part that i think i'm assuming you can resonate with the things that are the hardest for us are also on the other side of that the things we're most proud of we're never not proud of ourselves when we do something hard for ourself and i'm really proud of my work at ap sumo where i'm like i'm showing up and so for everyone out there whether you're doing youtube whether it's religion whether it's sports whether it's a business like how are you showing up or in your partner and the same thing with my partner where it's been a challenge you know i'm flying to spain i'm staying up till 10 11 p.m to work spain hours so that i can be with her and now that she's pregnant it's like okay am i really showing up in the relationship for what she needs.

47:19And that's, lately it's been awesome. It's been, I'm happy to show up for those things, but it's been, it's been a journey to get to that point.

47:29If someone only has a few thousand dollars a year extra to spend on something, what's more important for them to invest it in the stock market or real estate or to invest in themselves? You know where I'm going with this one. So my favorite ism that I, that I like is don't invest in the S &P 500. It's invest in the S &ME 500 because you will get so much more on active income by investing the small amount you have into increasing your earning capacity than you ever would. Like, just think about the dollars here. So let's say that you had$1 ,000, all right, saved up. If you invest in Apple, whatever, or you'll have a 20 % gain this year, a 30 % gain this year.

48:10Okay, great. So now you have$1 ,300. But$1 ,000 can teach you a new lesson or a new skill that can take your earning capacity. Because if you only have$1 ,000 saved up, you either make very little money or you're not following the first rule, which is you've got to spend way less than you make. And so if you're on the I don't make a lot of money part, by the way, you can still definitely save more. But if you're on the I don't make a lot of money part, then doubling your earning capacity would, by the end of the year, you might have$30 ,000 saved up rather than$1 ,300 in the alternative scenario.

48:44It's not even close. It's an order of magnitude. It's not even close. But everyone's afraid of work. And everyone wants to get rich quick, which is why lotteries continue to make money. And so if you can just get out of that basic fallacy that you're somehow going to get lucky, I would rather get rich for sure. And be willing to... That's for me. Success insurance is extending the time horizon and being willing to learn skills along the way. That's success insurance. Because play out the other scenario. If you actually do hit the lottery, you also lose it because you don't have the skills to keep it.

49:13It's true. So the other path is pure fallacious thinking. It's false. It's a false dream. It's never going to result in wealth. If you get rich quick, you get poor even faster. We've already seen it. Say that again. If you get rich quick, you get poor even faster. Why? Because you don't, it's, so my favorite magic card, hold on, I'm going to bring it back. My favorite magic card was this card called Burning Wish in Magic the Gathering. And the sub, the flavor text on the card said, she wished for a weapon, but not the skill to wield it. and I always love that text because I thought about that as as business as money it's like we wish for money but not the skill to wield it because money is just a potential for exchange and so if you don't know how to make it then everything you have is just a nut that's going to go down because you also don't know how to multiply it if you got lucky because anybody who wants to get rich quick only is relying on luck you're relying on chance you're gambling you're not investing and so if you want to play the game and the thing and unfortunately the the the tweets, the Instagram posts, the whatever, we see someone's screenshot when they go from$10 ,000 to$1.5 million.

50:16You just don't see the other hundred people or a thousand people who put$10 ,000 and went to a dollar. And so the idea is I want to get rich for sure. And the surefire way to get rich. And the reason all these billionaires get up there and they say, hey, just invest in skills. And everyone's like, sure. It's because that's the only thing that protects you. and I come from a country or my father goes from a country rather where my family, everything we had was taken from us by the government and so it's very real that you may have to start over halfway through your life at zero and if you do lose it all, the only thing you have is what you can do with your brains and your hands and so my grandfather who I was very very close with used to always say you have two hands and one brain, use them and my father came here with a thousand dollars and he built the life that he has now.

51:08He's a doctor. But that was only possible because he had skills. And even though everything was taken, land, houses, everything was taken, you can't take no divorce, no tax, no government can confiscate who you are and what you can do. And I see that as the ultimate freedom and independence of excellence and representation of excellence. If someone has skills, but they have a bad relationship with money, or they have money wounds, or they have money beliefs that they live in fear around whenever they receive money, are they able to earn and make a lot with those money wounds? Yeah. And so I will, I will, first off, I don't know what money wounds are, but I will, if I can define it the way I would define what you're saying is, so it's like bad money beliefs, money wounds, money trauma, bad energy, all of that, I'd bucket into bad behaviors under specific conditions, which is that you don't know how to behave with money.

52:06That's all it is. How do people learn how to behave with money? Well, you follow very simple rules. The first rule is that you spend less than you make, period. No questions asked. That's it. What if money, what if people have never had money and then all of a sudden, oh, I got a thousand dollars and they get excited or they get scared or they get worried. How do you manage the energy that money brings to you? So I think it's thinking in ratios. So it's like, I will save this percent. I will spend this percent. This percent goes to my house or my lodging. This goes to food. And you just have to stick with it.

52:35Now, I think that that process is good to go through. But I agree that when you don't make a lot of money, what feels like a lot of sacrifice results in very low payoff. And that's why I'm bullish on put as much as you can in increasing your earning capacity. skills. Yeah. And the thing is, is you, you don't have to, you don't have to bot. So you really only have to have one skill and then you can get everyone, every other skill you need in your life. And so when I, when I got into the business game, the only real skill I developed quickly was sales. And I didn't even have that skill, but I had to for the gym.

53:10So I learned how to sell and I got pretty good at it. And so I do, I would go to these networking things. I would meet other business owners. And I, I felt like I was a collector of, of, of fine skills. I would find people and I'd you get customers? And somebody would be like, oh, I'm really good at Google PPC. And I'd be like, oh, I don't know how to do that. That sounds interesting. And so what I would do is I'd go and say, hey, what's your sales process look like? And they'd be like, oh, you know, it's okay. And I'd be like, hey, do you mind if I just like, I'm pretty good at it and I can walk you through what we do because I might help you out.

53:40And so then this is the key part. If they said yes, which plenty of people take free work, I would then treat it as though they had paid me for like a$10 ,000 like consulting gig. I would do tons of research. I would talk to their team. I would re-script what they had. And then I would train their team on it. I would tell them how to manage it. And this is when you know you did it right. I would present it to them as though I was like making a presentation. And they'd be like, dude, this is too much, man. Like, whoa. And then the magic thing comes out. They say, what can I do for you? And I'd be like, it's funny you ask.

54:12Can you show me your PPC stuff? And the thing is, is that they would give me less than I gave them, but it was more than I had. And so it was a net positive game. And so you only need to develop one skill and then you can barter for everything else. So like in the networking groups that I joined, I got voted the best, you know, the member of the year in the first year they ever had it. When I was in my fraternity back in the day, I became voted president. Like I always try, like when I was in high school, I was a editor in chief of the, of the literary magazine and vice editor of the newspaper.

54:42Like I always tried to like, what can I trade what I know? How can I just keep trading up? And that's fundamentally what I've done my whole life is just trade up. And the risk here is that let's say you do all this work and the guy says, thanks, and then just gets off the call. Well, there's two possible scenarios. One is you're not as good as you think you are. Or they don't function with reciprocity. And that's okay. because again, volatility only appears volatile with low volume. Yeah. You got to do it a lot of times. If you do it a hundred people, you'll get what you want. And if there's three guys, you know, PPC, you give to all three and maybe one of them helps you out.

55:21Absolutely. But you're still better off than you were before. And so this is the part, like this, this was how I, this is how I leapfrogged in my earning capacity. Really? Oh, a hundred percent. And then for the people I couldn't, I would do a favor and ask to pay them. You know what I mean? Like I would do people to, I spend so much money for one-on-one time. And I also think there's something very powerful about being in person. And, um, not zoom. Yeah. I think there's something, I think that you can observe far more behaviors in person. There's so many things that are lost on zoom. Uh, what's the most you spent on one-on-one time?

55:57I spent$350 ,000 for an hour, an hour with who guy was worth a 7 billion. What was the biggest lesson he taught you in that one hour. He said, protect your reputation with your life. Did you need to spend 350 grand for that? I think that there's something powerful about knowing that someone who is much further ahead says it to you. And it's not that that advice is something you haven't heard before, but it's the advice that you needed to hear right now. And that was what I needed to hear. Wow. Protect your reputation with your life. What does that look like? And how does one do that? When anyone can speak about them negatively online and say what they want and make stuff up or...

56:43You can only control what you do. And so, the Stoke approach to this is that you know the truth. And, you know, there's the whole like, you know, bad news, you know, lies get out of, get around the world before, you know, the truth gets out of bed. But I see lies a lot. Like, so Warren Buffett says this about the stock market. He says in the short term, it's a popularity contest. In the long term, it's a weighing system. And I see reputation the same way, which is in the short term, somebody could make some viral thing about you or they make some piece of content, some hit piece, whatever it is.

57:14But if you do right by the values that you have on a long enough time horizon, you touch enough people, the surface area of your reputation compounds. Because it's not just that you do business with one person. but as soon as because if you do grow in your reputation then more people will ask about you to the people who have met you and then they will give you they will give their opinion just kind of like the movie before or the or the the restaurant yeah exactly and so if every person who has done business with you is like he's tough affair or like he's very ethical or like you know what i would i would trust him with money you know what i mean if if if you have that that core set of beliefs and you behave consistent with that those bundled terms i want people to think these things about me?

57:54What are the behaviors I have to do in order to get them to think that? I'll give you a story about this. So when I was in college, I had a bad reputation with women in my freshman year. I went from high school where it was small, you know, small pond and I kind of ruined my reputation there. And so I went to like a new area where like no one knew me. And I was like, oh, this is like, it's like virgin land, right? Not with the pun intended. But I went to college and I very quickly got the same reputation in weeks yeah oh wow and so i went home depressed and i went to my dad and i was like man i was like how do i get all these people to stop saying that i'm you know a man whore or whatever and like that i'm just like this guy who just goes around and sleeps with girls uh because it's preventing me from sleeping with um and he said and i had all these ideas of like maybe i maybe i could do this or i could like i had all these like strategies and he said, have you considered not acting like a whore?

58:50Not sleeping with women. Yeah. And, uh, and I was like, no, no, it can't be that. And so, but it's like, as a kid, like you, you know, for the parents, they are listening. Right. I, I dismissed it immediately, but you know, on the, on the flight back and in thinking when I'm, you know, sitting there alone in my dorm, I was like, maybe I do need to just stop acting this way. And so what ended up happening is I decided, I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm going to be something, someone that I want to be proud of. I want to be proud to associate me with me because I want a different caliber of girl. And that caliber of girl is not going to go for this, you know, this guy who's always chatting up.

59:25Like, I want a good quality girl. Not just hop, a good character. And it took basically two full semesters of me acting like a priest, basically. And just like doing well in school, studying hard, just, you know, being a contributing member of society that all of a sudden like more like the the reputation started to change but like the new balanced reputation it took time it did yeah and so it's like there's this period of time that you have to go through and be willing because right now you are living through consequences of actions you took last year five years ago and so you have to be able to split it without getting the reward for it and that's the hard part and that's the part that no one's willing to go through and the longer people know you for one set of characteristics the longer it's for them to unlearn that.

1:00:12This is a really good point. So the reason I think it's so hard for people back home, right? So for anybody who's ever left home and you go back and people treat you a certain way. Because they knew you for 20 years. Exactly. And what's interesting is imagine over, imagine you went to high school with somebody and middle school. All right. So it's like they had eight years with you and they had every single day, they had hours and hours of exposure. You go back and they have two days a year during the holidays. To see you. Well, it's like, okay, okay, well, two days out of 10 ,000 were this way.

1:00:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost never going to outweigh it. I've given a lot of thought to this because I was like, why can't I change everyone's mind? Because I have changed so much. But the reality was that the exposure required to change their perception of me was greater than the time that I was willing to dedicate to it. You need to spend two, three years with them now to show up as you are, not two days. Exactly. And then the trade-off is, is it worth it? No, it's not. I don't have many childhood friends anymore. Of course. And I also, I'll make this point to anybody who's in that situation where you're like, man, I don't want to be like these people.

1:01:15I don't want to be like my friends that I have right now. Is that you have to be willing to accept that you may lose those friends or you probably will lose those friends. But you will gain many more with the caliber of person that you want to become. And you'll get caliber of friends that match it. But there is a transition period where you'll have neither. It's tough, man. For about a decade, I felt like I didn't have many friends. I felt like all my childhood high school college friends, they didn't want to hang out or when we hung out, they didn't really understand me. And they were kind of judging me.

1:01:44And it felt like, why are they always talking weird about me behind my back? Why am I not invited anymore to stuff? It's kind of hurtful, right? Totally. But at the same time, those, I guess, childhood friends that I maybe do have or I talked to once in a blue moon, they've chosen to accept the person I've become. and appreciate who I still am, not expect me to be who they once knew. And I can respect them for that and not judge them on their journey and just accept them for being a friend. Yeah. And I think, well, two parts. One is the people who hate it or the people who don't accept the new version of you, they downplay your success for being willing to take a risk that they were unwilling to take.

1:02:24Because your success makes them feel bad, whether they say it or not. It does because humans are comparative creatures. We look at one another. I mean, we learn through modeling. We see what someone else does. And if they did something that we aren't willing to do and they have something that we don't have, we start not liking them because what does that mean about me? And so, what does that mean about me? It's much easier to say, he's changed and he sucks now rather than saying, I didn't and I suck. So hard. Because the people who don't know how to say you've grown say you've changed and they say it like it's a bad thing.

1:02:57And I think the simple response to that is, and you have it. And I think it's being willing to sit in that and be like, I'm okay with this. And I have lost almost every friend or rather I could say I have actively cut off every friend that I've had, you know, from the beginning. I have one friend that I still have from middle school, one friend. But basically no one else. and that one friend is because he is a is a champion like he's a cheerleader he has a different life but he's just like dude go he's not criticizing you he's not judging you he's like you're amazing yeah and you keep him in his life in your life and he's also not a he's not a money guy he's an f guy agent and so he's exceptional at what he does it's just not money related so we have this perfect thing where neither of us we have no competitive overlap so i'm like how many how many drug rings did you bust this month yeah dude let me tell you these syrians i I was taking this whole gang I took down, you know, like, and so I get to hear this whole thing.

1:03:51He's like, what deals have you done? And because he, you know, we get to kind of live vicariously. But that's cool. Those relationships are rare. And if you find somebody who speaks well of you behind your back and talks to you to your face, those are the friends that are worth keeping. Amen. And if you can find somebody who can do both of those without flipping every conversation and making it about themselves, I think you have somebody who's worth keeping. But most people don't even meet one of those criteria, let alone all three. Speaking of young men and ourselves when we were younger, what would you say are three brutal truths that young men need to hear in order to become more successful in life?

1:04:34You have to be willing to trade the things you love right now for the things you want. and you may not like the price of what you want, but you can't change the price. And so there's all this groveling that goes back and forth for younger men of like basically wishing it didn't cost this much time or cost as much failure or cost as much risk in order to get to where they want to go. And so they basically stomp their heels and then retreat inwards into their basement in video games and whatever else rather than confronting their own inadequacy. because the first thing you have to do is say it's my fault everything that i have in my life is my fault but if it's your fault it's also under your control to change because you cannot change what you do not control and so to me it's taking full accountability so that's number one um the the second thing is if you want to change your behavior, change your conditions.

1:05:35And so one of the most powerful things that you can do is change who you surround yourself with and where you live. And so if you have an environment of people around you who speak ill of you or like basically reinforce the wrong trains and the wrong actions, there's a reason I left Baltimore. And there's a reason you left, right yeah yeah as i went to where i thought i was like i want to get into fitness and so i was between miami and southern california those are i was like those are kind of the fitness capitals i'm going to go to one of those places because i want to do fitness and i want to be around the best and so baltimore is not the capital of fitness and so me changing my environment allowed me basically a blank slate to to start behaving the way that i wanted without interference because a lot of people have interference in their surroundings.

1:06:25And so I think it's a lot of times you have to, well, I think this leads to the third thing. So you change your environment. That's number two. The third is delete everything that is not getting you closer to your goals. And so I have used that. This razor has not changed in my life, which is my, probably the two most often asked questions that I have that I like mentally think. I probably think of 10 times, 20 times a day. is number one, does this action, this person, this decision increase or decrease the likelihood that I achieve my goals? Yes or no. Does it increase or decrease? Does this friend who always wants to go out, does you playing fantasy football increase or decrease the likelihood that you hit your goals?

1:07:11And that is just, it's black and white. It's pretty, like, you know, it's pretty, like, you know, which, what, what, now you can make the whole, like, but shouldn't I have a, I'm talking about winning. If you want to talk about, talk about, you know, fulfillment and all the joy and all that stuff, like I'm not the guy for that. Yeah. Yeah. But because fulfillment is winning for you. For me. That's your hobby. Your hobby is winning. Where some people have hobbies for joy and fulfillment, you have hobbies which are to win. I like looking back and enjoy it because memories pay dividends in the future.

1:07:44And so suffering lasts only for a moment, but the memory of the achievement lasts forever. And for me, I love like looking back on what I've done only insofar as it excites me about what's to come. And so, um, the, so delete everything using that question. And the second question, which is my prop, it might be my favorite question in, it might be my favorite question in general, which is what would it take? And the reason I love that question is because it assumes success. So if you go up to some girl who's way out of your league and you're like, what would it take? It assumes that she's going to go out with you.

1:08:25Or she's going to say, you need to be, you need to make this much, you need to do this, you need this. She's going to give you the answers. Right. And then do you want to pay that price? Exactly. Either you don't like the shoes or you don't like the price. You got to pay it if you want it. Yeah. And, and so what would it take? And it's like, Hey, if we have a deal that we're working on, like, what would it take? Now, you can make the decision whether the price tag's worth it, but at least you learn the price. And what I have found in my life is that when I try to answer those questions, like, what would it take for me to be number one in this field?

1:08:51What would it take for us to lead this market? What would it take for me to be the best salesman in this company? The answers are not as crazy as you'd think. And so a lot of people spend most of their time answering questions not worth answering. It's playing games that aren't worth playing. It's like if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And so no one asked the question before they play the game, is this game worth it? And so when you ask the question of like, what is the big goal and what would it take? Then you just get to solve for it. And to me, it's just great. If I know what it is, then either I have those resources or I have to use my resourcefulness to get them.

1:09:32But it's under my control. And these are how the big leaps in my life have occurred. When I wanted to get in the gym business, I was like, okay, what would make it the highest likelihood that I hit my goals? So what I did was I joined, I said, I'd say$50 ,000, 23 years old. I lived on nothing. I said$50 ,000 and I traveled to California because I was like, all the best fitness people are here. Then I joined a gym mastermind of all gym owners. I didn't own a gym. I joined a gym mastermind without owning a gym. And he was like, you sure? And I was like, yeah. He's like, why? I was like, well, I think I'll learn from everyone else's mistakes before I start.

1:10:06smart right so the first thing i said i was like where do you guys open one guy's oh i have a terrible location i would have done this another guy's like oh i might and then the guys who had the best locations like what was what was it okay well how how many square feet should i have oh how should i organize the gym what equipment oh no should i buy or lease exactly i thought i was gonna they're like oh don't buy those they're really expensive i thought i was using no one uses them oh yeah girls trip on those don't don't use them and so i was like uh-huh i was just taking all these notes and so then i was like okay if i'm around the best gym owners and i'm learning from them, then I can be at year 10 in my career on my first year.

1:10:36Because if I do what the best people did, I will get what the best people got. And so I've always just focused on what did they do? Forget the energy, forget the manifestation, forget the vibrations and the frequency. What did they do? I will do that. And not only will I do that, I'll do way more of it because I don't want to just pace them. I want to beat them. And so like Kobe, it's like if he's working out, If the best guys are working out twice a day, he's like, well, I got to work out three times a day because they're already ahead of me. So if I'm working out twice a day and they're working out twice a day, then we're going to advance at the same pace.

1:11:10But I got to work out three times a day. If this guy's doing$100 a day ad spend, I got to spend$500 a day. If this guy's doing one piece of content, I got to make$10 because he's better at it than I am. So I have to make$10 just to make up for my skill deficiency. And so, again, this volatility is a consequence of volume is that you're typically just not doing enough. And the people who outwork you, they out output you. And I'll give you a really simple example that will demonstrate this, that it's very real. So in a company, so I just took over operating one of the divisions on the media side.

1:11:40And the first day I came in, I was like, okay, so what are we going to do? And so they're like this. I was like, okay, what are we going to get done by? And they're like, next meeting, which is like the next Monday is a weekly meeting. And I was like, okay, how many hours does that take? They were like, I don't know, probably like four hours to do this thing. Can we do it today? Exactly. And then I was like, okay, well, it's noon. let's meet at four I'll give you an extra hour and show me what you did and then we met four hours later it was done and it was like okay well what can you do tonight so that we can do tomorrow morning and he said this thing so we just moved the buck along and in three days we did three months of work because if you think there was 12 actions that had happened and you had a one-week cadence in a very real way we moved forward at 20 times the pace and so a lot of people think that like it's not speed of activity it's elimination of waste there's all these other things that people are distracting themselves with.

1:12:30And so if you were that young man, you have to recognize the trade-offs that you have to be willing to make. You have to change your environment so you can change your behavior. And you have to delete everything that's not the thing that you want most. And if you can't decide what you want most, then that's what you need to do first. But once you know what you want, then go get it. Yeah. Then what do you think are the most toxic traits that young men have today that are holding them back? So if we define traits as bundled terms, right? Which means that there's just series of behaviors that bundle into one word.

1:12:59Convenient for communication, hard for training. Is that, you know what, there's actually just a hundred small skills that you need. And I think demystifying this makes it easier. So it's like, I want to be confident. Well, confident is an approximation of how statistically likely something is to occur. So, in statistics, you have a confidence metric. How likely is this thing to occur? And so, if you want to be more confident, it means you need to do enough repetitions that you can make a statistical prediction that it's likely. If I go up on stage 100 times in a row, I do the same presentation and I get up there like, how are you so confident?

1:13:37I'm like, because I've done this 100 times and I know how this is going to go because I've done it before. And so, people want the confidence before the reps. But especially in confidence, the proof comes before the pudding you have to you have to do the reps before people are like wow because you can't fake i mean you can you can fake confidence but not yourself to your you'll know and as far as i'm concerned in life i'm the only one i'm trying to impress and so if i know i'm fake i'm the one who in the middle of the night is looking up being like i can't believe i'm so full i would hate that it's an empty life it's also living for other people and so if the toxic trait is people wanting the outcome without the repetition, right?

1:14:20So I'd say that's number one. The, the, let me see, what are they? I'm trying to think of like a really specific thing. Well, the second one is, has everything to do, it's offshoot, but it's entitlement, right? And is, is fundamentally believing you deserve things and that, that the world must accommodate you. Why do so many people have that belief? I think parenting in the school system has made it so that like you can have a safe room and you can have a cry corner. And if you think that one plus one is five, like this is emotionally safe for you. I don't want you to feel. It's like, but you're going to.

1:14:59The thing is, is you can't change reality. All right. And so you can believe whatever you want. But if your actions aren't aligned with how the world works, you're not going to get what you want. And you're going to be very upset for a long time until you figure out that the universe doesn't bend to your will. Does it bend to your will though? No. But if you do a set sort of actions, it starts to bend. I play within the realm of reality. But it bends to your will once you do the actions that it wants you to create for you to get the results you want. I think that the universe is that I don't anthropomorphize it so I don't humanize it and say it wants anything.

1:15:32Right, right. But because of the actions you took over the last 20 years, you were able to create extraordinary results. Yes, based on reality. And if I had said, I want to become the best business guy and then sung songs every day, that's not going to be a line. Now, I can manifest all I want, but that's not going to be the thing that makes me the best businessman. And so I don't get to set those rules, but I can play by them. And I think a lot of men specifically waste a tremendous amount of time stomping their feet, demanding that the world be different than it is. And so to me, that's a loser's mentality.

1:16:03And they then spend more time defending their excuses than defending their ambitions. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

1:16:40I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.