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I will do enough work that there is nothing left to be done.

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And that means that I can also do fewer things, which means I have to be more selective about

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the things that I choose to do.

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But when I do them, they will be done well and they will be done well.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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customers, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way.

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I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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Today we're going to go through as many of your lessons as we can in about three hours.

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And we're going to see what we can get through.

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A friendly reminder that in three generations, everyone who knew us will be dead, including

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the people whose opinions stopped you from doing what you wanted all along.

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Imagine that someone you know achieves every dream and hits every goal they have.

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Years later, they get old and die.

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Two years after that, how much do you care about as much as everyone else will if you

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accomplish your goals and dreams.

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Do it for you.

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So I think about death all the time, because it's probably the central theme.

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It's probably the thing that I think the most about.

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And I think that influences how I see time and also how I think how it influences agency.

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Like what actions I'm willing to take despite the judgment of others.

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And so a lot of times, it might be because I have more insecurity than everyone that

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I think like, man, I want to do this thing.

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And then I hear all these other voices of reasons why I shouldn't do it or why somebody

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also say, like, that's bad or you'll bad or like, that's wrong, whatever.

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And so I think I've had to come up with a lot of these devices to get around my own insecurities

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to take action despite those insecurities.

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And the biggest one that I think about is that it doesn't matter whether I achieve all

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of my goals or I don't achieve all of the goals in three generations, I'll be forgotten.

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And the only people who were nacing against me will also be dead.

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And so then it's like, just do it for me.

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And then when I wake up every day, there's only one voice I have to listen to.

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But that means that you need to be able to work out what to do from first principles.

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You now no longer have societal norms or assistance or role models or archetypes or expectations.

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And that's also difficult in a different way.

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I think that the more you flex whatever that muscle is of like independent thinking, the

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more it becomes the default way that you think.

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And then everyone else's action is just start looking more and more insane to you.

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What's an example of that that you can think of?

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I mean, shoot just the most basic ones of like living the life that you don't want,

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not wearing what you want to wear, not dating who you want to date, not living where you

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want to live.

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Like you're living at home and you want to move and your parents say no and you don't

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make the move or you're dating a girl because she's socially accepted, you know, by your

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friend group, she's safe, but like there's always some distance in between you.

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But you're like, I don't want to risk it, right?

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Or like you're in the job and every day you go there and you're like, I mean, it's okay.

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And the idea of just living an okay life just sounds so terrifying to me that the freedom

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to fail over and over again is still more fulfilling to me.

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At least it feels like it's real than walking through kind of on autopilot.

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And so I think that's a lot of the choices that other people make that seem insane to me

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now, but didn't seem insane to me a decade ago, you know, I think it's just like as you practice

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taking more agency, taking more responsibility for the decisions, then you just get better

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and better at it.

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And then it just seems more and more ridiculous.

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You're like, they're like, I just can't quit my job and you're like, why?

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Like no, physically, why?

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Like why can't you quit your job?

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Like, you know, I mean, they start hyperventilating and it's like, you could,

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could you move in with your parents?

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Could you move in with a friend?

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Could you split rent?

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I mean, I could, but I mean, other people who are going to die in a hundred years would

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think what?

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And one of my favorite ones is, um, and I say this all the time with Laila, like whenever we're

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getting to some sort of like mini complaint, it's like, you know, if you zoom out far enough,

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you can't see the earth.

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So we're talking about like, oh, man, they're going to mess up this order on this vendor's

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double, but I was like, you know, if you zoom out far enough, you can't see the earth.

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It's just like, it just puts everything immediately into perspective of how ridiculous

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some of the things that we're concerned about are.

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Sean Poori's got this thing where he says, don't follow what most people do because you don't

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want the results that most people get.

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The average person is obese, likely to be divorced and has less than one K in the bank.

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It feels safe to do what everyone else is doing, but it's actually a terrible decision.

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It's like the best way to guarantee to not have the life that you want is to do what everyone

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else is doing, unless you want what everyone else has with no, which no one does.

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Yeah, it's being able to think for yourself and treating it like a muscle, I think,

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is a smart way to consider it because in the beginning, it's really, really hard.

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You've been resting on societal norms and the way you've dealt with past trauma and your

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parents' expectations and what all of your friends do and what's accepted and all of this stuff

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for so long that when it first comes to you needing to step on that muscle, it's like trying

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to move your ears. All humans have got muscles that can move that ears, but because no one

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works it as a child, they just atrophy away. This is the ear muscle of personal growth.

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I think I had a lot of practice with it because I had, so a lot of people have many voices

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that they hear that they feel are judging them. They have their friends, they have their uncle,

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they have their siblings, they have their cousins, co-workers, whatever. I think I had just one

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voice that I heard really loudly. I was talking to one of our employees the other day and I was

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trying to put in perspective younger guy and I was like, I imagine how much you care about your

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mother's opinion and your father's opinion and all of those other people. I was like, and now imagine

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that there's literally only one because I had no siblings. I basically had no mother. I had just a

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father. His approval was literally everything and he disapproved of the path that I wanted to

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take in my life. I think a lot of these mental faculties or these little frameworks or these

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isms just came from how can I combat this incredibly booming voice in the background because when I

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look at what I was doing at the time, I was a consultant, I graduated in three years, I took the

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consulting job, I did all the things, but the craziest thing was that the moment that my father was

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most proud of me and he approved of my life the most was when I was the saddest. That's when I

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was like, maybe his approval isn't the right way to feel good about life. That started basically

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the sixth military journey from when I decided that I wanted to change my life until when I changed

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it. I think that as you become more able or more potent or higher agency, that timeline between

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when you decide you want to do something and when you actually do it just continues to compress.

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Now if I want to change something, I'm like, let's change it. I like, we walk out of the

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thing. I was like, we're never going to do that podcast together. I don't want to talk to this

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person again or whatever it is. Whereas before, it's like, I've just sleep on it. I have to really

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think about it and like, why do I care about how I'm going to say it? This is what it is done.

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And it's just like that timeline is compressed, but the hardest one for me, like the first one

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was by far the hardest and everyone since then, the nice thing is that no matter how difficult

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your circumstances, if you have the bigger the wall that you have to get through is as soon as you

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get past that one big wall, you then can use that wall is the evidence for why you can jump over

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the next wall because that will be the biggest one. And so like after I did quit my job and left my

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house and left Baltimore and didn't tell my dad and tells across the country because I was so afraid.

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People think of me as like some big awful whatever. I was like, I was so afraid of my father's

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disapproval that I didn't tell him until I physically left the state. Like, like, I'm not like,

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think about that. Like, I was even just one state over. I was like five states over and then I was

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like, hey, by the way, I'm going to California. And he was like, well, let's come over. We'll talk

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about it. And I was like, I'm in Ohio. Already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then obviously he had a

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different reaction. But like, but then after that, it was like, what do I have to do now? It's like,

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oh, I got a, I got to sell strangers. And I was like, I told my dad I didn't want to do what he

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wanted. How hard could this be? And so like it then becomes this one huge proof point. So the

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bigger that the dragon is that you have to say the more evidence you have that you can say the

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next dragon. And I think that is if there's ever been a good point for why getting over the one

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first hard one is so hard is that it will then give you the reinforcement that you can do whatever

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you need to do next. Yeah. The life you want is on the other side of a few hard conversations.

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And you're living a life you hate because you're too afraid to have them.

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I think about that a lot because like whenever I feel anxious or insecure or angry or sad, I'm like,

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what conversation do I need to have that I'm not having? And so then and usually if I just think for

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not that long, I'm like, this is the conversation I've been putting off. And then, you know, I'm not

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that the poster trial of mental health. And so I'll just call myself a pansy for not having the

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conversation. And then and then I just have it. And so again, I think it's like, I need to have

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this conversation and the time between when I have it versus or when I when I know I need to have

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it when I actually have it just because continues to compress. And if you've ever had like a breakup

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or a employee firing, one of the or acquitting if you're an employee, like these things that you dread,

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I don't know if you notice it, but like the day you do it, the moment after you do it, I'm like,

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how many other conversations can I have? Like I want to be like, I'm like, you're up to anything to talk to.

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Yeah, totally because the serial killer for awkward conversations. When I so like the next

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series of hard conversations that I had after I left home was actually like years later. So I had,

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I had multiple partners in what I said, I had a partner in one of my gyms. I had a partner in

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four other gyms. I had a partner in a Cairo and dental marketing agency and all of them relied on

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me to make money. And so all of their livelihoods were still dependent on me, but I was splitting

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everything and it was just it was it was horrible for me at the time. And so I remember when I

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ended up getting in a DUI and you know, I talked to a performance coach or whatever. And he was like

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your stress and these conversations could literally kill you. He's like, they almost did. So I got

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in head on collision at six miles an hour and I walked away. No injuries. But it was like my wake-up

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call, but not to stop drinking. It was my wake-up call that I needed to have these conversations.

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And that's what I was avoiding when I was drinking. It wasn't alcohol. It was the things that I'm

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avoiding that I'm using alcohol to get away from. And so the next day, I had the first conversation

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with the first partner and it was horrible. But the moment I was done, I was like, I got to call

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the other guy. And I called the other guy. I was like, this is how it is. And the thing is,

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is I had this backstop of my death of like, you almost just died because you wouldn't have this

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conversation. And so then it just gave me this courage to just be like, and whatever the reaction

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was, I was like, I'd rather be alive. That was it. And so it's weird, though, because death has

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been this really recurring theme in my life that like the same thing happened when I was eight,

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like the only thing that gave me enough balls to stand up to my dad to be fair from a distance

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from the car. And I was driving halfway across country. Like, let's not make, let's not make

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me into too big of a hero here. Was the idea that like, I started thinking like every day, I was like,

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I hope I don't wake up. You know what I mean? And that was the thing where I was like, this is

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a big enough problem that like if you don't want to wake up, then what have you got to lose?

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Exactly. And that was it. And I was like, I have nothing to lose. And that was when,

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that was when I think in the last podcast we talked about this where it's like, if everybody who

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who's like at the bottom and feels like they have nothing going for them, reframe that as I have

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nothing going for me, which also means that I have nothing to lose by taking action. It made

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you a much more dangerous person. And I think that was the flip that I've had repeatedly shown to

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me in my life that allowed me to take the step that I was afraid to take. Have I told you about

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the region beta paradox? Do you think that one? Okay. So this is interesting. So imagine that you had

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to go a mile or less. And if you did a mile, a mile. Okay. If you had to travel a mile or less,

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you would walk it. And if you had to go more than a mile, you would drive it. Okay. So paradoxically,

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you would go two miles quicker than you would go one mile. If you follow that rule,

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the important insight here is that if you only take action when things cross a certain threshold

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of badness, sometimes better things can feel worse than worse things. So if you look around and you

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see that people are stuck in region beta, this zone of comfortable complacency, right? It's the

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guy that sticks and is just okay job because his boss isn't too much of a dick, but the pay isn't

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that good and he's not really that passionate, but it's all right, whatever, whatever. The person

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that stays in the acceptable relationship, they're not that fired up, but they're not really in love,

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and their partner's not really got much alignment with their interests or the person that stays

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in a crappy apartment. And there's a bit of mold in the ceiling, but it's cheap and it's in a good

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area of town or whatever. All of these people would be better off if their situations were worse,

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because it would give them the activation energy to kick them out of the bottom and that only regret

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would be not doing it sooner. Did I love that? When I say it's funny because if I look back on

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the instances that were the most painful in my life, every single one of them without fail has

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created a disproportionate gain, right? Like the most painful thing early on was for me was

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quitting my job and leaving my dad basically. And then that created my first business and the gyms

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and all of that stuff. Getting into the DUI, the head on collision, and that whole situation got

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me out of all of these failed partnerships that I wasn't willing to do. But in the moment, I was like,

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I'm such a failure. I suck it, everything. But that gave me the springboard. When I lost everything

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the first time after that, that then gave me the idea that I needed to change the business model

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around. And that's what switched me into the licensing model. So each of these, and then that

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became the first real fortune. This is kind of alchemy, turning something which is worse than

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useless into something that's as precious and useful as possible. I'm sure you know the parable

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of the man in his son and he buys a son a horse and then it falls and breaks the leg and then

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they're like, oh, it's so sad. And then the army comes, then his son doesn't die. And then it's

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like, oh, it's how great, right? And so it's one of those really interesting ones where like whatever

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negative situation, and this is probably good for the audience. But like if you think back to all

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the negative situations, you had like the really, really bad ones, when you expand the time horizon,

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most times they become net wins. And so then it just means that like if you're in a really tough time

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right now, just got to wait. And then you get, and then you get your reference point back on all the

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things that changed as a result, because most times when shit is bad, it can't get worse. So then

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you feel like, well, it can't get worse than this. And then your action threshold decreases. And you

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take, and you do all the things you know, you should have done anyways. And so it's like we have

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this big stack of should do's. And we just wait until it's two miles. And then you just you're like,

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you just get like the firing conversation. And you're like, well, I just fired one person or like,

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I just ended one partnership. I just broke up with one girl or whatever it is. And you're like,

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who else do I need to talk to today? And then in like a period of like you've these rapid periods

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of growth that happen. And then you have the next web of comfort because it's way better than you

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were before. And I think it's, I wonder, this is more just like an open thought, but like I wonder how

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long, like more successful people stay in that next plateau. Like I wonder if they're threshold for

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action stays low. Yeah, they're like, oh, like I'm getting comfortable. Like how quickly they get

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comfortable into like, I need to change. I need to get better. Next one. The heaviest things in

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life aren't iron and gold, but unmade decisions. The reason you are stressed is that you have

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decisions to make and you're not making them. It's a good quote. You said it. You said it.

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I think a lot of times the decisions that we make are predicated on the conversations we need to have

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because usually like that, and what's interesting is like, you can define commitment by eliminating

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alternatives. So if you're committed, you've eliminated alternative actions. Like you can say,

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I'm committed, but until you eliminate other options, you're not committed. There's always a

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get out of jail free. And so a lot of people make decisions to end relationships, to quit their job,

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to start the new thing, but they don't become committed to the decision until they remove the other

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options. And then you're forced to take action on it. And so I think actually defining those two

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two different things. Now you could define, you know, decision is to kill off like Diccadere from

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Latin, but from a from a from a colloquial thing, I think there are two different instances.

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It's like, I need to change this and then I do change it. And the making the decision is when

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it becomes a commitment. Why unmade decisions so heavy? I think at least for me, it's because I

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have this hamster wheel on the back of my mind where I keep playing out different scenarios.

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And so I keep thinking like, well, maybe maybe I need to change what I'm currently doing. Maybe

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maybe if I just rethought, like, because I'm a big frame guy. So I'm like, maybe I just need to be

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thinking about this. Maybe if I zoom all the way out the earth doesn't exist. So maybe this

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doesn't matter. Maybe I'm just making a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the best action I should

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take is nothing, right? Like I, you know, I reframe all those things. But usually it's just because

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I'm afraid of something. And then that's why I'm not making the decision. And I think once I name

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and put a face, and it's usually not even a thing that I'm afraid of, it's one person's judgment.

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I'm afraid of. And then when I name the person, then it becomes, then it becomes real.

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Instead of being this amorphous like people, society, judgment, it's like, Tom.

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Like, do I really care what Tom thinks? I guess so. It seems like I'm not making this big change

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in my life because of Tom. Looks like Tom's more in control of my life than I am.

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Did. So I remember this when I was 19 years old, I was super angry, like all 19 year old men,

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right? That's the standard default, right? I was angry at both my parents for because I was 19,

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right? And I remember blaming them for everything, blaming them for my life, blaming them for not

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being a better person. I literally blamed them for being a bad person. And I remember realizing

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that when I blamed them, that I gave them control over my life. And then the idea that the people

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that I hated the most at the time were the ones who actually were controlling me was the thing that

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most sickened me to then actually flip my narrative to actually taking control. That was the

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one thought process. My mother, I'm giving her control over my romantic relate. My mother controls

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fuck that. I was like, no. And so just the idea that somebody who I was disgusted by at the time

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had that much power is what gave me the power to start taking action.

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So this hamster wheel thing that continues to distract you. I've got this concept called

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anxiety cost. So kind of like opportunity cost. When you have an unmade decision, every single second

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that you spend thinking about the unmade decision could have been gotten back had you just made

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the decision. And realizing that it's a justification for eating frogs earlier in the day. I need to

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answer that email. The longer that you wait until you answer that email, the more times you will

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think the thought, I need to answer that email. And if we assume that what truly, truly matters in

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life is the time and the attention that we spend within that time. Your time is being captured and

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your attention is being captured by a thought that could have been gotten rid of had you have just

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done it had you have just had the conversation broken up with the relationship left the job told

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the father, whatever. Done your stretches, cleaned your teeth, had a shower, whatever it is that

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you needed to do. All of that anxiety cost could have been gotten rid of had you just gone and done

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it. You can move through life at seven times the rate of other people by simply changing when you

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say you're going to make a decision from end of week to end of day. So think about how that stacks

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up. So it's like let's say that there were four decisions that you needed to make. If the normal

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person takes a week to make the decision and then their mind moves on to the next thing that they

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have anxiety for and start making that decision and decide another week, decide another week, decide

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it's a month to make those four decisions. Whereas the the super the superman that takes one

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decision day one, one to second decision day two, third decision day three, fourth decision day four,

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they aren't even finished the week yet and they're where the other person is at the end of the month.

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And like that speed of decision making like not paying the attention cost, the opportunity cost

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of your time. I think it's really profound in terms of how quickly people move through life

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in terms of achieving the goals that they set out because people were like, how is that guy so

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young and he's achieved XY and Z. It's like, well, what takes you a month to make a decision?

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We make it an hour and then the next hour I make another decision that takes you year next month.

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And so like that's how you can go 30 times or 100 times faster than the quote average person who's

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overweight has a thousand dollars in their bank account, you know, and it's going to die at 70.

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Can you just go back to before you made that first decision with your dad?

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Because you've mentioned it, you know, people might look at your, I would say,

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ruthlessness at least in some regards with decision making, you know, hiring and firing and making

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these business decisions. And there's all of these great stories about, I had this thing and I

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realized that partner wasn't right. So I got rid of that business. And you know, that's the sort of

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thing that would tear most people up for six months, 18 months, maybe forever. And to look at

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that degree of cutthroatness or at least decisiveness, I think is almost unfathomable for a lot of

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people. Are you a representative avatar? Is pre-leaving Baltimore Alex a representative avatar for

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the average person? I think so. I mean, I was high achieving, you know, I said, I mean, like,

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I did well in school. I tried hard. I did those things. But in terms of my risk tolerance and my

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fear of failure and my insecurities, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if anything, real talk, I'll bet you that

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I have more insecurities than most people because those insecurities are what drove me to do well in

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those things. Not because I cared about school, but because I cared about what other people thought

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about me. Yeah. Yeah, I, um, I've spoken to hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of high performers.

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On balance, people are driven way more by fear of insufficiency than they offer with some

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well-balanced, perfect desire to just maximize their greatness in life. Like the activation energy

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for almost everybody is I'm scared I might be a piece of shit. What? Hang on. Oh God, I might be a

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piece of shit. I genuinely might be a piece of shit. I need to go and do something so outrageous

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that I can't be a piece of shit. There's no way that it could happen. I might be a coward. Oh my

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God, what can I do to stop myself from being a coward? That's the activation energy.

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It's funny because if you regress fear to its most basic form, it's death.

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And death is the greatest motivator and like you can prove it in a simple example. It's like if I

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all of a sudden go up to anybody on the street and I put a gun in their head and I say, you know,

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point a gun at their head and I say go do this thing. They'll go do it. But if I say you can have

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anything you want if you do this, they're willing to go 10 times harder with a gun in their face

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to not die. And so if you take fear and regress it all the way down to its basis form,

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like that's what the insecurity is, like if they think I won't be enough and if they don't think

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I won't be enough, then this one happened. If this one happened, this one happened, I'll be alone,

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I'll be dead. But like if you just regress it all the way down, like that's all it is. And so

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like the biggest achievers in life, I think have most directly tied them not doing whatever it is

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that they want to do to death, whether they're consciously aware of it or not. And then that's

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what motivates them harder. You're not afraid of failing. You're afraid of what other people will

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think of you if you fail. But if you're afraid of that, imagine what they think of you when you

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aren't even trying. Oh yeah, they aren't. I'm such a dick sometimes. Is it strange to hear

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your like angry toilet tweets read back to you now in the cold harsh light of day?

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I think that does a particularly difficult poo I was cracking on that.

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You know, real talk, the tweets that I have, people don't know this, but the tweets are notes

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to self. So they're just directed at me so that I can look back on them and let be reminders of

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like, I don't don't do that. And so like I think to myself, man, I'm afraid of doing this. And

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I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm afraid of what this person's going to think about me. Because if I

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were to be able to fail in quiet and complete isolation, then I wouldn't care. And then I think,

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well, what if I don't succeed in public? What do they think then? Nothing. They don't think

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about me at all. And so obviously that comes from the perspective of seeking to gain approval

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and attention from others anyway. So it's like, listen, if you're insecure, which everybody is,

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let's be real, you might as well use the insecurity to get something out of it. One of my favorite

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things about entrepreneurship is like use what you've got. And so a lot of people think that they

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need to fix their conditions in order to get like the perfect conditions before they start,

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but the perfect condition is whatever one you're in because it gives you whatever assets you

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have. That's the cards that you're dealt. And so you just play the hand. And a lot of people

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have great cards. It's like, man, I'm so afraid of it. It's like use it. It's like, I have nothing.

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What makes you very dangerous? Because you have nothing to lose, right? Like one of the really

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interesting things about I think about it from a business perspective, but it probably applies

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to everything is that there's always an advantage and a disadvantage from every position, right? So

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like I remember one, I mean, Jim launch is still a big company and still continues to grow. But

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in the gym licensing space, there's not many people who compete with us there, right? And I would

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talk to you guys who are in the space, you know, talk, you know, talking to conference, whatever.

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And you know, younger guys would be like, well, I want to be in the space too. And it's not fair

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because, you know, you have this big advantage. And I was like, you have a way bigger advantage

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than I do. And I was like, because if I were in your position, I would go to every single gym owner

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and be like, you don't want to be with Jim launch. You don't want to be with Alex. You're just a

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number to him. Like you're never going to talk to him. Like you're just a cog in the wheel there.

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With me, you're going to get my personalized tendon there. He's just some employee down the chain

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that's following some process, right? I was like, but on the flip side, if I'm talking to that same

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gym owner that I'm going to say, you don't want to talk to Jimmy. He lives in his mom basement. He

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has no proof that he's good at what he's, he's out the reason that we're number one in the spaces

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because we've done it so many times and we have a system that we know that if you go on this side,

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you will get this result in the outside. I was like, there's always a position and there's

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always an advantage. I was like, you just have to play the one you've got. And most people just

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look at what everyone else's advantage is and don't think which one do I have?

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When you're talking about, it's not you that's afraid of failing. You're afraid of other

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people's opinions about why you're going to fail. Like the reason I think that cynicism is so

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popular on the internet is that the upside of never trying is never having to feel the pain of

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failure. That's fundamental. It's sour grapes at an existential level, right? It is a cynicism

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safety blanket. It is protecting you from ever having to fail the downside of anything. I will

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assure my own failure in private so that I never have to face my failure in public.

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It's kind of like investing. Like everyone's afraid of losing money when they invest, but the

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only guaranteed investment that doesn't work is never investing to begin with. And so it's like

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they take the long failure rather than the short one, right? I mean, it's what it is, right? You

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just fail long. And they're like, I prefer that. But that's, I mean, that's, yeah,

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it's like you and are going back and forth on trying to figure out how many different ways can I say

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that either the people that you're worried about judgment are going to die or that you're going to

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die or that even if you do achieve the thing, they won't care anyways. Or if you don't do anything,

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they won't think about you to begin with and don't you want to be thought about to begin with?

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Like don't you want some level of significance?

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I just, you're going to die. And I think like I was very grateful to this. So one of my biggest

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inspirations or whatever you know, influences when I was in Baltimore was I would have lunch

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with my grandfather three times a week. So he was 90. Old guy. So I'll go to the nursing home

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and we'd have lunch three days a week. And listening to him talk about the regrets that you had in

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life, it's so much more painful to watch someone who has no options left. Like he's going to die.

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And he's going to die tomorrow and he died a couple of years later. I mean, like he lost all his

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mental faculties, you know, almost sadly, basically when I stopped when I left Baltimore,

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one of the sad parts is I was one of the only people that kind of like kept him lucid. You know what

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I mean. And after that, no one really, no one really visited him, no one really did anything.

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And so I think he just rolled down. I think the lunches might have been the only thing that he

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looked forward to. And seeing someone old with no options and nothing but regret. Now not that he

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had everything to regret. He had things that he did really well. And I took those things from him.

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He would, he would repeat the same lessons. You know, like every lunch, this would be

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a lot of older people kind of repeat a few key lessons. And everything that he had he flew during

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he fled during the during the World War II, you know, he fled from the Germans and all that stuff

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because he had a Jewish sounding last name. He wasn't, but it was enough that he was flaying,

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right? And he always just says like you have two hands in one brain. I was like, use them.

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And that was always this thing that he said to me. And I think just like when I think about the

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things that he was going up against, compared to the things that we're going up against now,

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it just made me feel like, all right, like this is not as big of a deal as I really think it is.

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I don't have Germans at the at my door. What were the regrets that he had him? Yeah.

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He would have spent, I mean, again, there's deathbed regrets and then there's real life regrets.

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But there's there's things that he would have done differently in terms of the business.

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There's things he would have done differently with his wife. He had he got divorced.

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That you know, he would have done things very differently with his kids, so my mother and her sisters,

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which actually talking to him about how he raised my mother,

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helped me in some way forgive her for some of the things that I felt were wrong doings that she

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had done to me. And so it's funny because you know, one of my favorite quotes from

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Blase Pascal is to understand is to forgive. And like when you when you I think there's another

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thing that I like a lot, which is it's really hard to hate close up. It's like if you really see

383
00:30:56.520 --> 00:30:59.480
someone and you see all the things that they went through and the things that they that happened

384
00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:03.000
to them to become who they are, then you understand them and then you understand why they did

385
00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:06.680
X Y and Z because if we don't understand, we assume that it's because they're just evil people.

386
00:31:06.680 --> 00:31:09.480
And most people aren't that way. They're this way because they've been reinforced or punished

387
00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:13.480
for doing something like that in the past. And especially for her, she was reinforced for acting

388
00:31:13.480 --> 00:31:16.600
a certain way over and over and over again to the point that it was it was core to her character.

389
00:31:17.160 --> 00:31:21.800
And so when that got put on me, I was like, I hate you. You're terrible. You're evil like blah.

390
00:31:21.800 --> 00:31:25.320
But like when I looked at it in a much longer time horizon of like she was four years old when she

391
00:31:25.320 --> 00:31:29.160
came here, she couldn't speak English. She got beat up as a kid like all these things. I'm like,

392
00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:33.800
you know what? Maybe give her a little grace, you know? And I remember when when I came back and

393
00:31:33.800 --> 00:31:36.680
it was right around that same time where I realized I was giving this person all this power,

394
00:31:37.400 --> 00:31:40.440
she yelled at me for something when I came back home from college my freshman year.

395
00:31:40.440 --> 00:31:43.800
It was a standard fight. You know, here's the button that I pressed to get into the normal fight

396
00:31:43.800 --> 00:31:48.360
that we get into. I just remember she hit the button and I just like wasn't that upset.

397
00:31:48.360 --> 00:31:51.560
And it's like I felt nothing. She like hit the button. She like hit it again harder. And I was like,

398
00:31:52.280 --> 00:31:57.320
I just weren't looking at her and be like, I get it. I'm sorry. Like you had a tough,

399
00:31:58.120 --> 00:32:02.920
tough life. And then she just broke down and you know, started crying because it was like she

400
00:32:02.920 --> 00:32:08.680
felt understood. And I think I know that was a roundabout way of getting back to regrets, but

401
00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:15.160
he regretted how he had raised her. But his through his regrets, I got to see why she was the

402
00:32:15.160 --> 00:32:18.680
way she was. And then it diffused the bomb that was between me and her.

403
00:32:18.840 --> 00:32:25.160
I tell you that story Douglas Murray told me about regrets from Christopher Hitchens. Brilliant. So

404
00:32:27.400 --> 00:32:33.640
Christopher Hitchens, one of the new atheists, was sat in some British pub with Douglas Murray when

405
00:32:33.640 --> 00:32:40.200
Douglas is young. And you know, you can imagine it's some musty Chesterfield sofa. He's probably

406
00:32:40.200 --> 00:32:45.640
got a cigarette in his mouth and it's glass of scotch or something. And Douglas is vacillating

407
00:32:45.640 --> 00:32:52.920
between these two different choices that he needs to make. And he is complaining, lamenting the

408
00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:57.160
fact that I have this thing, but I have this thing. And if I do this thing, I can't do this thing.

409
00:32:57.160 --> 00:33:01.400
And what do I do? And apparently hit like sat back in.

410
00:33:05.160 --> 00:33:14.120
Douglas, in life, we must choose our regrets. And I was like, fuck. So I'm

411
00:33:16.200 --> 00:33:21.960
three Manhattan's deep in Douglas Murray's apartment in Manhattan at two in the morning. And he

412
00:33:21.960 --> 00:33:26.280
sneaks off to the toilet. And I quickly write this down because I know that my like half cut alcohol

413
00:33:26.280 --> 00:33:30.760
brain isn't going to remember it. So I noted down because that was all the trigger that I needed.

414
00:33:30.760 --> 00:33:35.480
Which is also good argument for noting things down. And I reflected, I'm as reflected on that for

415
00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:39.080
a year. I must have thought about it for a year. In life, we must choose our regrets. What the

416
00:33:39.080 --> 00:33:45.560
fuck does that mean? Okay. First off, in an existence where opportunity cost is baked in because

417
00:33:45.560 --> 00:33:49.400
you don't get to split test life. And by doing a thing, you can't do a different thing. I have

418
00:33:49.400 --> 00:33:53.240
the choice to go into the gym and go into the theme park. If I go to the gym, therefore I can't go

419
00:33:53.240 --> 00:33:59.000
to the theme park, even if the decision of going to the gym was the right call, I will always have

420
00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:04.360
the open loop of, yeah, but what if I'd gone to the theme park? You can't ever know, right? Okay.

421
00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:10.920
So that means that fundamentally regrets are baked in to our existence. And I'd always thought

422
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:18.520
that the reason I had a regret was due to some suboptimal decision I had made. If only I'd made

423
00:34:18.520 --> 00:34:23.720
this decision better, I could have humiliated the regret. Okay. So regrets are an unavoidable part

424
00:34:23.720 --> 00:34:28.840
of being a human and they're a byproduct of opportunity cost, which you can't get away from.

425
00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:35.160
But what does it mean that you have to choose your regrets? Okay. Well, if regrets are

426
00:34:35.160 --> 00:34:40.680
inevitable, if they're going to happen no matter what, an easy way to look at the decision is

427
00:34:41.400 --> 00:34:48.280
rather than which do I want to do, which regret could I live with? Because there are certain regrets

428
00:34:48.280 --> 00:34:51.720
that you can't bear living with. Now you can bear living with them, but they're going to be worse

429
00:34:51.720 --> 00:34:56.440
than other ones. Yeah. So what is the difference between I need to have a difficult decision,

430
00:34:56.440 --> 00:35:00.200
I need to have a difficult conversation with my boss about leaving to go and do this thing,

431
00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:05.160
or I need to, that's the regret. That's one regret of the sitting down and seeing them face to face

432
00:35:05.160 --> 00:35:09.320
and telling you're going to leave their small mom and pop business and you're the main salesperson

433
00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:11.960
and it's going to be terrible and they're going to cry and you're going to feel like a piece of

434
00:35:11.960 --> 00:35:17.720
shit. That's one regret. Another regret is looking back at a decade that you waste in a job that

435
00:35:17.720 --> 00:35:23.560
you fucking hate. Yeah. So in life, you have to choose your regrets. I love that as a decision-making

436
00:35:23.560 --> 00:35:31.560
frame because it also jumps starts our fear engine because rather than saying like what do I want,

437
00:35:31.560 --> 00:35:37.640
it's what I what do I hate least? And so we get to run it, so then you get to use your run

438
00:35:37.640 --> 00:35:41.960
away from engine rather than you go towards to it. Yeah, the mouse and the cheese again. Yeah.

439
00:35:41.960 --> 00:35:48.840
And was it you saw on me that? Yeah, with the cat. I mean, so I'm just going to butcher what

440
00:35:48.840 --> 00:35:54.520
you told me. But why don't you share that? Yeah, this was on our last episode. So this is

441
00:35:54.520 --> 00:35:58.200
sequel for the people that were listening. John Peterson talks about the study where they

442
00:35:58.200 --> 00:36:03.160
starved a rat and they put it into a tube. They waft the smell of cheese in from the front

443
00:36:03.160 --> 00:36:07.720
and there's a spring attached to the rat's tail so they can work out how hard it's pulling,

444
00:36:07.720 --> 00:36:11.640
how hard it's pulling is a proxy for design for how much it wants it. You'd think this rat is

445
00:36:11.640 --> 00:36:16.520
starving. It's going to pull as hard as it can. So it waft the smell of cheese in and it runs towards

446
00:36:16.520 --> 00:36:20.360
it and whatever. They do another iteration of the study. This time they waft the smell of cheese

447
00:36:20.360 --> 00:36:26.040
in from the front and the smell of a cat in from behind. Yeah. It pulls harder. Yeah. Why? Because not

448
00:36:26.040 --> 00:36:29.480
only in life do you want to run towards something you want, but you want to run away from something

449
00:36:29.480 --> 00:36:35.000
that you fear. And this ties into your the three most common traits of very successful people,

450
00:36:35.560 --> 00:36:42.760
superiority complex, massive crippling insufficiency and impulse control. So superiority complex,

451
00:36:42.760 --> 00:36:49.240
I can achieve this thing. That's the cheese. Crippling sense of insufficiency, I fear the cat,

452
00:36:49.240 --> 00:36:52.680
impulse control. I'm in a tube. There's only one direction that I can go. I don't need to make a

453
00:36:52.680 --> 00:37:02.040
choice. Yep. I love this a lot as a frame for decision making because that like think about the

454
00:37:02.040 --> 00:37:07.400
decision that we were just talking about, right? So it's like I'm the sales guy and I stay and

455
00:37:08.040 --> 00:37:12.600
like if you were to frame it in upsides, it's like upside is I keep these friends, right?

456
00:37:14.520 --> 00:37:18.840
And but I want to leave so that I can start this business, right? Those are the upsides.

457
00:37:18.840 --> 00:37:25.400
But when you think about it in terms of like, I wasted a decade of my life not living the life

458
00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:30.200
I want. To me, I mean, even when I say it, it sounds more motivating. Even though it's the exact

459
00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:33.240
same thing, it's like losing a hundred dollars versus gaining a hundred dollars. People have

460
00:37:33.240 --> 00:37:37.720
three times higher loss aversion. And so it's like if you can't get yourself to do something,

461
00:37:37.720 --> 00:37:41.000
think about it from the perspective of what you have to lose rather than what you have to gain.

462
00:37:41.640 --> 00:37:46.680
You've got a quote that I love. My biggest fear is getting to the end of my life and thinking I

463
00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:53.400
wasn't good enough. What's that mean? And I'll define good enough is I could have tried harder.

464
00:37:54.760 --> 00:37:59.720
Like I want to leave everything on the field. And one of the things that has helped me a lot,

465
00:37:59.800 --> 00:38:02.440
I mean, in the quote that went unbelievably viral.

466
00:38:05.800 --> 00:38:07.880
Do you want me to do it again? Do I need to do it again?

467
00:38:10.600 --> 00:38:15.400
You don't gain confidence by saying shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by stack,

468
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:18.120
giving yourself a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are,

469
00:38:18.120 --> 00:38:22.280
outwork yourself out. And again, a lot of the tweets that I have are notes to self.

470
00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:27.560
Because like I have a big presentation coming up. We got 500,000 people who are registered

471
00:38:27.560 --> 00:38:33.400
for this book launch that are coming out. And I'm thinking to myself, it's like how can I guarantee

472
00:38:33.400 --> 00:38:38.680
that when I step off stage, no matter what happens, I feel like I have accomplished that I've

473
00:38:38.680 --> 00:38:43.960
done a good job that I can look at myself in the mirror and say good work. And when I was younger,

474
00:38:43.960 --> 00:38:47.800
I used to have no way to do that. That's because I measured everything on outcomes. But I feel like

475
00:38:47.800 --> 00:38:52.120
because I've got a little bit more experienced, I do have a way to win now. But it's hard.

476
00:38:52.840 --> 00:38:56.920
And the way that I win is when I finish and I say that there's nothing else I could have done.

477
00:38:57.560 --> 00:39:00.920
And so that means that like the reason that I feel confident about this book that's coming out is

478
00:39:00.920 --> 00:39:06.760
I wrote 19 drafts of the book for full rewrites and to end to make the book. I did six hours a day,

479
00:39:06.760 --> 00:39:11.960
my first six hours from six a.m. till noon every day for two years to get this book to where it is now.

480
00:39:11.960 --> 00:39:16.120
And when I was done with the book, I was like, there's nothing else I can do to this. Like this is it,

481
00:39:16.120 --> 00:39:19.640
there's nothing else. Like I can't make it simpler, I can't make it shorter. I can't cut it. I can't

482
00:39:19.640 --> 00:39:24.040
add a visual that I should have added. It's done. And so to the same degree with the presentation that

483
00:39:24.040 --> 00:39:28.120
I have, I gave myself this framework of like, okay, well, if I were to speak in front of 10,000

484
00:39:28.120 --> 00:39:32.520
people, I would probably spend a good amount of time prepping the presentation to make sure it was

485
00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:38.200
good. I was like, well, I'm speaking front of 500,000. I was like, so I can rationalize spending

486
00:39:38.200 --> 00:39:43.960
50 times the amount of work and effort and time to make this thing exceptional because I mean,

487
00:39:43.960 --> 00:39:47.800
the numbers are hard to fathom, but that is the numbers. Like if I had a 10,000, that's what I would do.

488
00:39:48.520 --> 00:39:54.440
And so it allowed me to take a presentation and, you know, I have 900 slides that I'm going to get

489
00:39:54.440 --> 00:40:02.360
through in 60 minutes. And I have now, every single day, I do a full draft of the, you know, I'd say

490
00:40:02.360 --> 00:40:07.400
the, say the presentation of my head. And then I do a second run where I say out loud and I record it.

491
00:40:07.400 --> 00:40:14.840
And then after I record it, I play the recording with the slides up and I fix or add every slide

492
00:40:14.840 --> 00:40:18.840
where I stumble or there's something that should be there or visual when I keep going until

493
00:40:18.840 --> 00:40:25.320
now, right now, we can change out. And there's not much else I can do to it. And so I'll still continue

494
00:40:25.320 --> 00:40:28.760
to do that from now until the day that it happens, but I probably won't have as many changes because

495
00:40:28.760 --> 00:40:33.800
I should just keep nailing it. And then when I get up there, it doesn't matter if the tech doesn't

496
00:40:33.800 --> 00:40:38.920
work or if the, you know, the book shopping page cart, you know, doesn't, you know, it doesn't work

497
00:40:38.920 --> 00:40:42.440
or whatever it is because I'll be able to step off stage and look in the mirror and be like,

498
00:40:43.400 --> 00:40:48.120
you did everything you could. And the thing is it's like no one else will know that because I know

499
00:40:48.120 --> 00:40:51.560
that, like, I could not do that. And I probably, like, you know, a lot of people were like,

500
00:40:51.560 --> 00:40:55.720
dude, you have so much good will, you could probably just say, like, here's the book. But I would know.

501
00:40:56.440 --> 00:41:01.880
And if I, if I believe what I say I do, which is that I'm the ultimate judge, jury and executioner

502
00:41:01.880 --> 00:41:09.240
of my own self-esteem, then I'm the only person who can say good job or not. And unfortunately,

503
00:41:09.240 --> 00:41:13.800
I have incredibly high standards. And so I can either just always feel like a failure because I

504
00:41:13.800 --> 00:41:18.680
always fall short of my own standards or I can create a standard that I, I willingly and consciously

505
00:41:18.680 --> 00:41:24.040
accept, which is that I will do enough work that there is nothing left to be done. And that means

506
00:41:24.040 --> 00:41:28.120
that I can also do fewer things, which means I have to be more selective about the things that I choose

507
00:41:28.120 --> 00:41:31.000
to do. But when I do them, they will be done well and they will be done well.

508
00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:37.800
Real quick guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything.

509
00:41:37.800 --> 00:41:41.160
And so the only ask that I can ever have are you guys that you help me spread the words we

510
00:41:41.160 --> 00:41:45.560
cannot more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have

511
00:41:45.560 --> 00:41:49.960
better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can

512
00:41:49.960 --> 00:41:54.600
rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I have to do is you can just leave

513
00:41:54.600 --> 00:41:58.840
a review, but take 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It means the absolute will to me. And more

514
00:41:58.840 --> 00:42:04.360
importantly, it may change the world to someone else. They say the true hell is on the person that you

515
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:12.040
are meets the person you could have been. Yeah. And a lot of the time, I think we look at

516
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:17.800
sport stars and watching this quarterback on Netflix at the moment and Patrick Mahomes is just this

517
00:42:18.840 --> 00:42:26.440
artist. You know, he's a halfway between a warrior and a savant and an artist and a musician and

518
00:42:26.440 --> 00:42:31.240
an everything rolled together, right? The reason that we love seeing behind the scenes with

519
00:42:31.320 --> 00:42:36.840
stuff like that is it is somebody at the absolute zenith of their capacity. And they are putting

520
00:42:36.840 --> 00:42:42.680
everything that they can into making this as good as possible. And I think that I sometimes find

521
00:42:42.680 --> 00:42:49.080
myself getting I certainly did before I had the podcast. I was wistful that I have the raw materials

522
00:42:49.080 --> 00:42:54.040
to work very harder things. And I'd never had a pursuit that I could have applied it to. There

523
00:42:54.040 --> 00:42:58.840
was nothing. I remember the first time I ever heard Peterson say, work as hard as you can at one

524
00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:03.240
thing for a year and see what happens. And I'd never had a thing that I could work. I could work

525
00:43:03.240 --> 00:43:09.640
hard at business. But the line between your inputs and your outcomes is so meandering and messy

526
00:43:09.640 --> 00:43:14.600
that I can always excuse away good or bad performances as not being on me. And for the most part,

527
00:43:14.600 --> 00:43:18.040
I would take responsibility for the bad ones and not take responsibility for the good ones,

528
00:43:18.040 --> 00:43:24.440
because that's how I'm wide. But I never had something that was linear, close to linear. I'm like,

529
00:43:24.520 --> 00:43:30.360
I put an hour in and I get an hour out or more than an hour out. And it's direct. And then

530
00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:34.440
about three years ago, I had this conversation with Dean, my video guy, I said, I want to turn pro.

531
00:43:34.440 --> 00:43:39.000
I read Stephen Pressfield, War of Art, then I read Turning Pro. I want to turn pro with the show.

532
00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:47.400
What's that mean? What would it mean if I treated this pursuit like an athlete does? So an athlete,

533
00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:51.160
they review game tape and they do mindset work and they've got a sports psychologist and they

534
00:43:51.160 --> 00:43:54.760
look at what they eat and they look at what they drink and they go to bed on time and they're

535
00:43:54.760 --> 00:43:58.280
hanging around with people that are growth-minded and they're getting the right coaches and they're

536
00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:03.240
all the rest. Everything is done in order to facilitate performance in the thing that they say they

537
00:44:03.240 --> 00:44:08.760
care about. But everybody has the opportunity to do that. You just need to define what the thing is.

538
00:44:08.760 --> 00:44:16.520
I'm never going to be Patrick Mahomes, right? I know. But I managed to find my thing and then

539
00:44:17.320 --> 00:44:22.040
nearly kill myself in dedication toward it. There's a photo that I put up on my Instagram

540
00:44:22.040 --> 00:44:29.000
a little while ago. Two weeks after I ruptured my Achilles. Yeah, that's all right. And I'm

541
00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:34.360
in a boot and I've got the laptop on my lap and we've created this arm that'll bring the mic to me

542
00:44:34.360 --> 00:44:37.400
because I didn't want to stop doing the podcast because I'd made this commitment. I'm going to

543
00:44:37.400 --> 00:44:41.160
turn pro and for three years we haven't missed a single episode three times a week, three times a

544
00:44:41.160 --> 00:44:46.040
week, three times a week for three years now. And before that it was two a week for a year and before

545
00:44:46.040 --> 00:44:51.240
that it was one week for a year. And it just keeps on ramping up. And the opportunity to commit

546
00:44:51.240 --> 00:44:58.120
yourself fully to something that you care about is beyond a blessing. And when you do it,

547
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:03.000
the way that you feel once you know that you've worked hard is great. And we said before we started,

548
00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:05.880
you got this big thing coming up which I'm super proud of you for managing to achieve even

549
00:45:05.880 --> 00:45:10.840
that hasn't happened yet. The difference between being nervous and being excited before you do

550
00:45:10.840 --> 00:45:16.120
something is your level of preparation in advance of it. If you step out on stage or in front of

551
00:45:16.120 --> 00:45:20.680
half a million people on a webinar, which is the craziest sentence I've ever said, if you step

552
00:45:20.680 --> 00:45:24.440
out on stage in front of half a million people and you've done absolutely everything, there's nothing

553
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:32.840
to fear. And that's why it's not about what everyone else will think because when I'm on stage

554
00:45:32.840 --> 00:45:37.560
making that presentation, the only person whose voice I'll hear is mine. And I will know if I have

555
00:45:37.560 --> 00:45:42.440
done everything in my control to be prepared or not. And what's the best thing that comes out?

556
00:45:42.440 --> 00:45:47.560
I didn't do everything that I could to prepare and I managed to fluke my performance. I managed to

557
00:45:47.560 --> 00:45:51.720
let close my eyes, throw the dart and oh, wow, it hit the bullseye. You'll even know that.

558
00:45:52.280 --> 00:45:56.360
There'll even be guilt. You won't even be able to fully enjoy your success because you'll

559
00:45:56.360 --> 00:46:01.080
have tarnished it with your lack of input. And what's interesting is that when you start defining

560
00:46:01.080 --> 00:46:06.680
your own success that way, it actually starts to feel under your own control. But the downside is

561
00:46:06.680 --> 00:46:10.440
you realize that you can do very few things. And then all of a sudden life feels very short because

562
00:46:10.440 --> 00:46:14.360
you're like, shoot, there's like not that many things I can do before I die. If I'm going to

563
00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:19.080
actually do my best. And what was interesting is I was talking to a CEO friend of mine. He's a public

564
00:46:19.080 --> 00:46:24.360
CEO. And he was like, I need to start making content right? I'm like, you're managing a billion

565
00:46:24.360 --> 00:46:27.720
dollar company. I was like, you're doing okay, man. But because of that type of person, it's like,

566
00:46:27.720 --> 00:46:30.840
I need to be doing better with my content, right? He's got a few hundred thousand followers.

567
00:46:30.920 --> 00:46:36.200
Anyways. And so I was like, all right. Well, how many pieces of content you put in

568
00:46:36.200 --> 00:46:41.800
out a week? And he was like, well, I mean, I put out one a day. And I was like, dude, I was like,

569
00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:46.760
we put out 300 a week. And he just, he didn't even respond. He just took, he just like

570
00:46:46.760 --> 00:46:51.080
burst his lips and nodded. And he was like, thank you for resetting my minimum standard.

571
00:46:51.080 --> 00:46:55.000
It's always like, thank you. Like, and I'm sure like when you talk to Phil Heath and he talks about

572
00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.160
the volume that is required in order to gain muscle and how much, how, how, how dialed in he is

573
00:46:59.160 --> 00:47:06.280
with food and all the other things. Just the amount of sheer work, like the biggest change in,

574
00:47:07.400 --> 00:47:12.280
or I'll say, biggest reason that I've had significantly larger returns or outcomes that have

575
00:47:12.280 --> 00:47:16.440
happened later on in my career. And they continue to get bigger and bigger is because the minimum

576
00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:21.480
standard for how much work I know I can do on something has, has multiplied a hundredfold. Like,

577
00:47:21.480 --> 00:47:25.400
I look at the first presentations I was telling Quinn this earlier. I look at the first presentations

578
00:47:25.560 --> 00:47:29.160
I ever gave. And I remember thinking to myself when I had this, I was like, this is a good

579
00:47:29.160 --> 00:47:34.120
presentation. And it's like 25 slides with like a heading and like three bullets on each slide.

580
00:47:34.120 --> 00:47:39.400
And being like, man, this is good. I'm like, this is a, this is, this is a pinch. This is like an

581
00:47:39.400 --> 00:47:44.920
afternoon. But in my mind, if I spent a whole day on something, that was like a lot of work. Now it's,

582
00:47:44.920 --> 00:47:49.800
I, you know, I like using this term like measure in hundreds, which is like measure in hundreds of

583
00:47:49.800 --> 00:47:54.280
hours. How many hundreds of hours have you put towards something? If you do that, I promise you the

584
00:47:54.280 --> 00:47:57.560
thing that you're making will get a lot better. And you'll also see how much more you're capable of,

585
00:47:57.560 --> 00:48:01.480
which is I think like my undertone of listening to what you were just saying with the podcast is

586
00:48:01.480 --> 00:48:07.160
like the more you do, the more you realize you can do. And so what happens is you're actually,

587
00:48:07.160 --> 00:48:10.680
even though you're, you're going pro right now, you're like, dude, next year, I'm going pro.

588
00:48:10.680 --> 00:48:14.520
Yeah. Because this is now just a minimum standard. Of course I work out three days a week. Of course,

589
00:48:14.520 --> 00:48:19.800
I do three podcasts a week. But dude, once we have the reality TV show and we have the full

590
00:48:19.800 --> 00:48:24.120
crew and we have the headquarters like because then the path gets lit of where you're going to go

591
00:48:24.120 --> 00:48:28.120
because you're so singularly focused and you know you have no other distractions. The attention

592
00:48:28.120 --> 00:48:32.760
cost isn't you're not paying that down anymore. And you're just like how many times can I repeat

593
00:48:32.760 --> 00:48:37.800
this effort? And then that's when you start unlocking mastery, right? Like I have this process for

594
00:48:37.800 --> 00:48:41.880
creating presentations. And before we turn on the mics, we were talking about it. But it's like,

595
00:48:41.880 --> 00:48:47.160
I've done a handful of presentations in my life. And I've gotten decent at making them. But the,

596
00:48:47.240 --> 00:48:53.160
the process now is so refined, which is like, it is game tape. It is, I make the thing. I do the

597
00:48:53.160 --> 00:48:58.040
thing in my head. I do it out loud. I watch the recording. I edit the thing. I do it in my head.

598
00:48:58.040 --> 00:49:02.360
I do it out loud. I watch the recording. I edit the thing. And I just keep doing it until it's class.

599
00:49:03.480 --> 00:49:07.480
Dude, I listen to, I listen to every podcast that I did for probably the first two and a half years.

600
00:49:07.480 --> 00:49:11.000
I listen back every single, every single time. But at the time, I didn't cringe because I thought

601
00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:16.120
that you crushed it. Anybody can go back and listen to episode one with Stuart Morton in my old

602
00:49:16.120 --> 00:49:21.480
office in Newcastle upon time. And you'll notice every other sentence that he says, I go,

603
00:49:24.600 --> 00:49:30.120
it's fucking infuriating. It's absolutely catastrophic. My accent's terrible. Everything,

604
00:49:30.120 --> 00:49:34.680
everything, everything about it is, is awful. And yet at the time, I thought it was great.

605
00:49:34.680 --> 00:49:40.280
Here's another interesting thing I've been thinking about recently. When you don't have anything

606
00:49:40.280 --> 00:49:46.600
to say no to, it's easy to focus on one thing. As success begins to get you more opportunities,

607
00:49:47.320 --> 00:49:51.800
your ability to say no becomes increasingly important. And that's something that I'm feeling now.

608
00:49:53.160 --> 00:49:58.920
Just more attention. There's, we're hockey sticking quite aggressively. And I'm not anywhere near,

609
00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:03.640
like, even middleing, zed list fame. But it's enough for people to see what they think is a

610
00:50:03.640 --> 00:50:07.720
penny stock and decide that they're going to try and throw the hat in the ring, which means that

611
00:50:07.800 --> 00:50:13.640
there's like 20 things I need to say no to every single week from new people that want to do a thing.

612
00:50:13.640 --> 00:50:16.200
They go, why don't we try this thing and why don't we do that thing and why don't we do the other

613
00:50:16.200 --> 00:50:20.760
thing? It was a piece of piss five years ago to say, oh, three years ago in the middle of Covid,

614
00:50:20.760 --> 00:50:24.600
to go, I'm going to go pro and I'm just going to focus on this one thing. Because what else am I going

615
00:50:24.600 --> 00:50:29.960
to do? All of my nightclubs have been shut down. I got nothing else to do with my life. Now,

616
00:50:30.520 --> 00:50:36.440
oh, you said you were going to go pro? Interesting. Let's see what happens when you have 30 other

617
00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:40.920
things every single week, vying for your attention. Now, let's see how committed you are.

618
00:50:42.120 --> 00:50:45.080
This is my favorite analogy for this, which is the woman in the red dress.

619
00:50:46.040 --> 00:50:50.520
But, you know, every many people have seen the matrix. If you haven't seen the matrix,

620
00:50:50.520 --> 00:50:52.760
you don't need to have seen it to understand the analogy. So,

621
00:50:54.200 --> 00:50:58.600
Neo is going through the training program, the protagonist, Morpheus is his educator, his teacher.

622
00:50:59.240 --> 00:51:02.760
And the education program only has one objective. And so he's walking through the city,

623
00:51:02.760 --> 00:51:06.680
people are going left and right. He's bumping into people going through like crowded New York.

624
00:51:06.680 --> 00:51:10.360
And then all of a sudden, it's kind of a black and white paleish look. It's green, black and white,

625
00:51:10.360 --> 00:51:15.480
but it's still black and white. And then all of a sudden, this woman in a red dress enters the frame.

626
00:51:16.040 --> 00:51:19.320
And you can't help but stare at this woman in the red dress. And she's a complete knockout.

627
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:24.680
And Morpheus is talking to Neo trying to teach him something. And as he's talking, he's like,

628
00:51:24.680 --> 00:51:27.720
Neo, where you look at me or you're looking at the woman in the red dress.

629
00:51:28.680 --> 00:51:32.840
And he says, look again. And he looks back and it's agent Smith holding a gun to his head.

630
00:51:32.840 --> 00:51:36.040
And he says, freeze. And then everything freezes in the frame. And he's like,

631
00:51:36.040 --> 00:51:42.520
if you're not one of us, you're one of them. And I see that as the opportunities that we

632
00:51:42.520 --> 00:51:45.800
have to say no to every day is like another woman in the red dress. And it's become a term

633
00:51:45.800 --> 00:51:48.840
that we use internally, right? It's like it's a woman in the red dress. And the thing is,

634
00:51:48.840 --> 00:51:52.840
is that the more successful you become or the more able you become, the harder the woman in the red

635
00:51:52.840 --> 00:51:57.000
dress is, right? You got a homeless girl that you're walking, you know, passed on the on the

636
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:00.280
street. It's like all dirty, but she's got a red dress on you're like, the thing is, is that

637
00:52:00.280 --> 00:52:04.200
that homeless girl, when you were in your apartment, actually looks pretty hot. Yeah, right?

638
00:52:04.200 --> 00:52:09.160
She's like, you know, I'm not, you know, I could, you know, right? But then the better you get,

639
00:52:09.160 --> 00:52:12.360
the bigger the opportunities. And that's where you have not your hypothetical 10, but what about

640
00:52:12.360 --> 00:52:19.320
your hypothetical 100? And I had a mentor say this to me right as we sold Jim launch. He said,

641
00:52:19.320 --> 00:52:25.960
Alex, that you know now that if it's not a billion, it's not worth your time. And that was such a single

642
00:52:27.320 --> 00:52:32.920
a great razor for all decisions. And so people, they're like, hey, we should do this endorsement.

643
00:52:32.920 --> 00:52:36.040
Hey, we should partner with this whatever. I mean, think about it. Like we're in the deal world.

644
00:52:36.040 --> 00:52:40.360
So how many do we get? We have 3,000 companies a month that reach out to us to do a deal.

645
00:52:40.360 --> 00:52:46.600
That's 100 a day. Curl. And we've done 13 deals in two years. And so like you think about

646
00:52:46.600 --> 00:52:49.400
from the acceptance rate, it's like, you know, and I'm not saying you shouldn't apply by all

647
00:52:49.400 --> 00:52:53.880
this. Go to acquisition night, I'm going to apply if you have an awesome business. But the point

648
00:52:53.880 --> 00:52:59.320
is is that like your no muscle isn't really a no muscle. It's just a yes muscle for the one

649
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:05.160
thing that matters most heroes and villains always have the same backstory pain. The difference is

650
00:53:05.160 --> 00:53:11.400
what they choose to do about it. Villains says the world hurt me. I'll hurt it back. The hero says

651
00:53:11.400 --> 00:53:17.640
the world hurt me. I'm not going to let it hurt anybody else. Heroes use pain. Villains are used

652
00:53:17.640 --> 00:53:26.120
by it. And full kudos here. This is a permutation of what Donald Miller said, who's a great writer.

653
00:53:26.120 --> 00:53:30.120
And he has a number of books. And he he talked about the first element. The second element of

654
00:53:30.120 --> 00:53:35.800
that quote is the part that I added to it about heroes using pain and villains being used by it.

655
00:53:36.360 --> 00:53:43.640
And so one of the things for people who are not where they want to be is that they have pain.

656
00:53:43.720 --> 00:53:48.040
Like oodles of pain. And I remember when I was starting out, I was looking for passion. I was looking

657
00:53:48.040 --> 00:53:52.680
for purpose. I was like, I just want to find something that I'm motivated by. But it's the it's the

658
00:53:52.680 --> 00:53:56.040
cat in the cheese. It's like we're looking for cheese. But we have all these cat behind us. And

659
00:53:56.040 --> 00:53:59.560
all we have to do is look and remember that they're behind us in chasing us. And so

660
00:54:02.440 --> 00:54:08.040
if you have the cat and you're staying in your current situation, you're being used by the cat,

661
00:54:08.040 --> 00:54:12.520
right? You're being used by the business owner who, you know, it doesn't treat you well and is,

662
00:54:12.520 --> 00:54:16.040
you know, and you're in this job they don't really want to be in, right? Or you're being used by

663
00:54:17.080 --> 00:54:20.520
the situation or the context of the relationship that you're in with the girl that you're like not

664
00:54:20.520 --> 00:54:28.280
that into, right? Versus saying like this is terrible. And because of this terribleness,

665
00:54:29.400 --> 00:54:34.760
I now have something that I can run away from. And then and then like rather than not looking at

666
00:54:34.760 --> 00:54:39.880
the knife or trying to take pain killers to not feel the pain, it's like completely sobering up,

667
00:54:39.880 --> 00:54:43.320
taking the knife and twisting it in your own heart and being like, I'm going to fucking do

668
00:54:43.320 --> 00:54:47.240
something about this. And I think that that's that's what the hero's like if we're heroes in

669
00:54:47.240 --> 00:54:52.680
our own story, it's not avoiding pain. It's choosing from the very beginning the alchemy,

670
00:54:52.680 --> 00:54:56.600
which is like you have these terrible situations. It's like and you have the opportunity to turn

671
00:54:56.600 --> 00:55:03.000
turn them into magic and and and skip or shortcut. All the growth you're going to have in a really

672
00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:06.680
short period of time, simply by twisting the knife and being like, I'm going to do something about it.

673
00:55:07.240 --> 00:55:15.720
Yeah, I think because people presume in the beginning that passion and purpose and meaning and joy

674
00:55:15.720 --> 00:55:20.680
and fulfillment are the things that get people going. But as I've said, of all of the high

675
00:55:20.680 --> 00:55:26.360
performers that I've spoken to, the vast vast vast majority of them are driven by insufficiency

676
00:55:26.360 --> 00:55:31.320
and resentment and terrible parents or terrible upbringing or a chip on their shoulder about

677
00:55:31.400 --> 00:55:39.000
bullies in school pick your poison. They have decided to use that to create the activation energy,

678
00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:45.800
right? You can lower your action threshold and increase how many points you have to prove. It's

679
00:55:45.800 --> 00:55:51.240
like, oh, I want to live a better life. Yeah, that sounds good. It's like, I want to prove the bullies

680
00:55:51.240 --> 00:55:54.920
that said I was a worthless piece of shit in school wrong. It's like, that's some fucking potent

681
00:55:54.920 --> 00:56:01.000
fuel. I do believe that scaled over a long enough time, it's toxic. And I don't think that it's

682
00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:09.000
necessarily how long. That's the question. Like a lifetime, right? But I mean, it'll fuel you

683
00:56:09.000 --> 00:56:15.320
for a decade pretty well. And I think that I look at me, I look at, I was bullied pretty badly in

684
00:56:15.320 --> 00:56:23.080
school and was an only child and had expectations from parents. And I combined all of those things together.

685
00:56:25.320 --> 00:56:28.760
And I did have a chip on my shoulder and I did want to prove to the world that I was worthwhile.

686
00:56:28.760 --> 00:56:33.080
And I did want people to, to realize that they had doubted the wrong person.

687
00:56:33.800 --> 00:56:40.600
Fuck yeah. Yeah, done right. I do. I think being really specific about your pain is helpful.

688
00:56:41.400 --> 00:56:47.560
So like, even being specific about the cheese, really specificity in general is helpful. But like,

689
00:56:47.560 --> 00:56:50.920
even more so like, what is the twisting the, what is twisting the knife? Like, what is,

690
00:56:50.920 --> 00:56:54.680
how do you operationalize twisting the knife? Right? Instead of being like, I hate my life.

691
00:56:55.320 --> 00:57:02.840
Right? It's, I hate the way Andrew makes me feel when he says that I'm a piece of shit and I'm

692
00:57:02.840 --> 00:57:09.240
not going to amount to anything, comma, because he's right. Like, why does it hurt me? Like,

693
00:57:09.240 --> 00:57:11.640
if someone says Alex, you're a piece of shit, you're not going to amount to anything.

694
00:57:12.200 --> 00:57:16.920
If someone accuses you of being full of thought, right? I would have, I'd be like, I have evidence

695
00:57:16.920 --> 00:57:20.520
to the contrary. So this will probably not bother me. But the things that bother are so the ones

696
00:57:21.080 --> 00:57:25.560
that you know have an element of truth or sometimes not an element are comprised almost entirely

697
00:57:25.560 --> 00:57:29.880
of truth and we just don't want to look at it. And so I think it's, it's the, the twisting the knife

698
00:57:29.880 --> 00:57:36.360
is looking in the mirror and saying, what if they're right? Success is the only revenge.

699
00:57:36.360 --> 00:57:41.400
As you expand, they shrink into a relevance. As you get louder, no one can hear them.

700
00:57:41.400 --> 00:57:46.440
You don't beat them. You cast a shadow so big, no one can see them to begin with.

701
00:57:46.520 --> 00:57:51.400
When people copy, they copy the wrong stuff because they don't know why it worked to begin with.

702
00:57:51.400 --> 00:57:55.080
And when it breaks, they don't know how to fix it because they didn't build it.

703
00:57:55.080 --> 00:57:58.360
So don't sweat it. Copycats will always be behind.

704
00:58:00.760 --> 00:58:07.800
Good shit. But success is the only revenge. Yeah. It is such a lovely, there's that, um,

705
00:58:07.800 --> 00:58:14.760
wait until the story behind it. I'm right. Yeah. So I was 15 years old. So this was really early

706
00:58:14.760 --> 00:58:21.560
in my life. Still jacked. Still jacked. Always jacked, perma jacked. And I, uh, this is

707
00:58:21.560 --> 00:58:28.120
this sounds so lame. So I had this teacher. So I'm freshman in high school and I might have been

708
00:58:28.120 --> 00:58:33.000
14, whatever the ages. And I'm walking through the hallway in this, this teacher is like an admin

709
00:58:33.000 --> 00:58:37.720
of some kind of walks out of his office and he's like, he's like, son. And I was like, I'm like,

710
00:58:37.720 --> 00:58:42.760
eat your sin trouble. What am I gonna do? And he's like, you work out? And I was like, no, he's

711
00:58:42.760 --> 00:58:48.280
like, why not? I was like, I don't know how. He's like, I'll show you. He's like, you got the jeans.

712
00:58:49.400 --> 00:58:55.400
And so that teacher, Mr. Gibbons, um, ended up working out with me every day in high school

713
00:58:55.400 --> 00:59:00.600
and showed me how to work out. And he probably saw on some level that I was some angsty teenager

714
00:59:00.600 --> 00:59:06.440
that felt angry about whatever. And I, during our workout sessions would be like, this guy said

715
00:59:06.440 --> 00:59:10.360
this to me like, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

716
00:59:11.080 --> 00:59:14.920
And I was like, man, I'm going to come back at our 10 year reunion. And I was like, I'm going to

717
00:59:14.920 --> 00:59:19.720
show him. I was like, he's going to be working for me like, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And he's

718
00:59:19.720 --> 00:59:24.280
like, no, he's not. And I was like, what do you mean? I was like, let me just have my moment.

719
00:59:25.400 --> 00:59:29.000
He's like, no, he's not. He's like, and you're not going to do that. Not if I have anything to say

720
00:59:29.000 --> 00:59:33.240
about it when you come back to the 10 year reunion. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like,

721
00:59:33.240 --> 00:59:39.320
because if you come back at a 10 year reunion and say, hey, John, like everything I have,

722
00:59:39.320 --> 00:59:43.560
look at me now. He's like, the guy's going to laugh and be like, you did all of this to try and

723
00:59:43.560 --> 00:59:50.120
prove me wrong. Man, I feel sorry for you. Only said that when he actually played out what my

724
00:59:50.120 --> 00:59:56.520
like revenge fantasy was in real life, I realized it looked, it looked stupid. Yeah. I looked like

725
00:59:56.520 --> 01:00:01.800
the beta and the fucking situation, right? And so he was like, the only thing that you can do

726
01:00:02.440 --> 01:00:08.520
is when so big that all of them constantly compare themselves to you. And then you'll forget they

727
01:00:08.520 --> 01:00:14.680
exist. And that's when he said he said success is the only revenge. He's like, it's not the best

728
01:00:14.680 --> 01:00:19.560
revenge. He's like, it's the only one. There's no other revenge because everything else is petty.

729
01:00:19.560 --> 01:00:23.720
Everything else does show that you were thinking about these people all day long, which means they

730
01:00:23.720 --> 01:00:29.160
win by default. He's like, all you can do is think about your goal and winning. He's like, in when

731
01:00:29.160 --> 01:00:34.520
you win, that's when you become so big that they shrink into a relevance. You cast a shadow that

732
01:00:34.520 --> 01:00:41.000
no one even can see them behind you. This is the nuance, I think, on the previous point when

733
01:00:41.000 --> 01:00:47.000
we were talking about the toxicity of that fuel, long term, you see me light up. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

734
01:00:47.000 --> 01:00:54.360
I think that when you think about the activation energy of using the things that you don't like,

735
01:00:55.160 --> 01:01:00.440
you have to be careful that you're using them and that they're not using you still. And a lot of

736
01:01:00.440 --> 01:01:08.600
the time I get this. And in my more juvenile moment, I see myself do this where I'll know that

737
01:01:08.600 --> 01:01:14.840
there's a game that somebody else that I don't like cares about. And I'll imagine myself playing that

738
01:01:14.840 --> 01:01:20.760
game to beat them so that I can stick it to them. Right. Purely for the reason of sticking me to them.

739
01:01:20.760 --> 01:01:24.280
Let's say that there's someone that really cares about being in shape. And I'm not in as good shape

740
01:01:24.280 --> 01:01:28.440
as I have been in the past. And I know that with muscle memory, if you give me 18 months in a good

741
01:01:28.440 --> 01:01:35.320
amount of testosterone, the thing that they care about, I would be able to make them feel really bad

742
01:01:35.320 --> 01:01:45.960
about. Okay. So I would hijack my own direction. Yeah. Purely to try and prove somebody else wrong

743
01:01:46.600 --> 01:01:52.280
in a desperate and somehow believe that that's me taking control of my life. Are you kidding me?

744
01:01:52.280 --> 01:01:58.760
I'm allowing them to ventriloquize me through pain that they didn't even mean to give me.

745
01:01:58.760 --> 01:02:03.720
Yeah. The woman in the black dress, the black pill equivalent.

746
01:02:03.720 --> 01:02:07.800
Right. Well, like, now it's like not even a distraction from your main goal. It's like,

747
01:02:08.520 --> 01:02:13.800
I'm going to make a new goal just to wrong this person and then somehow make make up the story

748
01:02:13.800 --> 01:02:18.600
that I'm in control of my life when I'm really just acting in complete reaction to this person.

749
01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:22.440
And so in so doing in beating them at their own game, they've already won by default.

750
01:02:22.440 --> 01:02:24.840
Yep. Because they got me to change the game I was playing.

751
01:02:24.840 --> 01:02:28.840
Right. Forget about who won. It's like, dude, you were over there and now you're over here.

752
01:02:28.840 --> 01:02:35.320
I see this with a lot of people. I think that it contributes to a lot more of why and how

753
01:02:36.040 --> 01:02:41.240
people adopt societal norms, the resentment that they have. It's not just other people want this

754
01:02:41.240 --> 01:02:46.440
thing. Therefore, I momentically want to do this thing too. It's, I know that other people will

755
01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:51.720
respect me and that my resentment will feel justified and manifest if I win at it.

756
01:02:51.720 --> 01:02:57.240
And that's really compelling. That's like a motivational spit roasting coming in from both ends.

757
01:02:57.240 --> 01:03:01.960
And it's, it's really, really powerful. And you need to be careful.

758
01:03:02.600 --> 01:03:08.360
I mean, I think, you know, one of the really early blessings and I'll be on it. This is where I

759
01:03:08.360 --> 01:03:17.240
think I was fortunate, right? Like I, I realized when I was about 28, right, that I had been trying

760
01:03:17.240 --> 01:03:21.240
really hard to beat. I mean, you'll notice a common theme with a lot of my stories, but I have

761
01:03:21.240 --> 01:03:24.600
one central person that I was trying to prove for a very long time, which is my father.

762
01:03:26.040 --> 01:03:28.040
And we're on good terms, by the way, because I always get that question.

763
01:03:29.240 --> 01:03:35.480
But this was after I left and he disapproved of my whole thing. And for five years, we didn't talk

764
01:03:35.480 --> 01:03:41.080
very much. And so he calls me up to, he says, Hey, you're gonna want to sit down for this. And I'm

765
01:03:41.080 --> 01:03:50.200
like, okay, what are you pregnant? You know, and so he says, I'm sorry. And I was like, for what?

766
01:03:50.200 --> 01:03:55.480
And he was like, for everything, right? Now, mind you, like this is a Middle Eastern father born

767
01:03:55.480 --> 01:04:01.160
in Iran to a Middle Eastern father there who was even more legit. Like, when, where my father

768
01:04:01.160 --> 01:04:05.880
was born, women weren't allowed to drive cars. Cars came with drivers with them when you bought

769
01:04:05.880 --> 01:04:10.920
them. The driver came with the car. Like, he was born in a very different world. Like, fathers

770
01:04:10.920 --> 01:04:16.360
don't apologize to sons. It just, it just wasn't that way. And I have a little bit more,

771
01:04:16.360 --> 01:04:20.760
a little bit more awareness than I did then. And I can see that now. But for me, I was like,

772
01:04:22.280 --> 01:04:26.920
now you apologize, you don't know me. And so rather than take it for the olive branch that it was,

773
01:04:27.880 --> 01:04:35.800
I said, I didn't care about your opinion five years ago when I left. And I was like, and I don't

774
01:04:35.800 --> 01:04:41.800
care now. And he was like, well, we'll see how long your success lasts. And so what could have

775
01:04:41.800 --> 01:04:46.120
been a really nice exchange ended up becoming pretty, pretty ugly. But the main point there was that

776
01:04:46.120 --> 01:04:50.040
I wanted to, in the beginning, like, make as much as my father than it was making more than my

777
01:04:50.040 --> 01:04:53.000
father and then it was making more than my father had ever made his entire life. And once I had

778
01:04:53.000 --> 01:04:58.840
achieved that, I realized that as much as like, it sounds terrible to say this, but like, I was trying

779
01:04:58.840 --> 01:05:05.560
to beat him at his game. And, and this is pretty alive in a lot of, a lot of Asian cultures. Same

780
01:05:05.560 --> 01:05:08.040
thing. Making money is a bit, you know, like when my dad wouldn't introduce somebody, he'd be like,

781
01:05:08.040 --> 01:05:11.320
this is so and so he makes this much a year. Like, it was just really clear. Like, this is how

782
01:05:11.320 --> 01:05:16.520
much status someone has. And so like, it was really deep for me. Um, but it was only when I realized

783
01:05:16.520 --> 01:05:21.080
that I had won at his game that I realized I'd never even asked the question of like, well,

784
01:05:21.080 --> 01:05:27.560
game am I trying to win? And I don't know how many people are actually trying to win at a game

785
01:05:27.560 --> 01:05:32.120
that they didn't even set the rules up for so many when they're in it. And that's why I say, like,

786
01:05:32.120 --> 01:05:36.680
I think I was fortunate that I, you know, I hit a really tough goal because my dad was, is, is a

787
01:05:36.680 --> 01:05:44.280
successful man, um, relatively early on. Um, but that, that for that exchange and then think like,

788
01:05:44.280 --> 01:05:48.200
and then reflecting black and being terrible about myself from like saying what I said. And then I was

789
01:05:48.200 --> 01:05:54.360
like, I'm, I did everything that I've done to this point to beat him, beat my father, the man

790
01:05:54.360 --> 01:05:57.720
who actually raised me, who tried to make me the best man I can. And when I think when I really

791
01:05:57.720 --> 01:06:05.640
start thinking about it, I'm like, I like who I am. He raised me. So doesn't that mean that he

792
01:06:05.640 --> 01:06:11.080
might have been the perfect father? And then that really messes me. And so yeah, so go ahead.

793
01:06:11.080 --> 01:06:18.120
Well, it's just, it's hard to think that the people you used to have contempt for or distaste

794
01:06:18.120 --> 01:06:24.760
or hatred or whatever shaped you in a way that you couldn't have been. And I often think about how

795
01:06:24.760 --> 01:06:29.640
the things I'm most proud of in myself are the light side of something that I was so embarrassed

796
01:06:29.640 --> 01:06:38.360
about, that's so ashamed about, um, you know, being an outcast as a kid meant that, uh, I love,

797
01:06:39.080 --> 01:06:46.440
or I'm capable of being on my own way beyond how anybody else is. Yeah. So far beyond it, I can

798
01:06:46.440 --> 01:06:54.280
work on my own in solitude for an endless amount of time. I can outwork anybody in solitude. Why?

799
01:06:54.280 --> 01:07:02.040
Because I spent almost all of my time between the ages of six and 16 in my bedroom listening

800
01:07:02.040 --> 01:07:06.760
to audio tapes, right? Listening to audio bucks and like throwing like a tennis ball against the

801
01:07:06.840 --> 01:07:11.240
wall or like playing with my like fucking mighty mouse from Mars or whatever they were called. What

802
01:07:11.240 --> 01:07:19.720
was it called? Biker mice from Mars. That was it. Um, and that was what I did. Yeah. So, but all of

803
01:07:19.720 --> 01:07:23.880
that discomfort and all of the challenges that I went through there are the thing one of the

804
01:07:23.880 --> 01:07:31.400
things that I'm so proud of myself on now. Okay. So what if I look back? And I said, well, all of the,

805
01:07:31.800 --> 01:07:38.200
um, the bullying that I went through and the challenges of feeling alone and being on the outside

806
01:07:38.200 --> 01:07:45.400
of social groups meant that I developed such attenuation and attention and focus and an ability

807
01:07:45.400 --> 01:07:49.960
to distill down what's happening socially, which is why I became one of the best club promoters in

808
01:07:49.960 --> 01:07:55.880
the UK for a decade and a half, right? Because for all of my school life, I'd been obsessing over

809
01:07:55.880 --> 01:08:01.160
how Alex wears his tie. Maybe that's why he has friends and I don't have friends or the particular

810
01:08:01.240 --> 01:08:05.320
brand of shoes that he's wearing or the particular like he carries his bag on that shoulder and I

811
01:08:05.320 --> 01:08:09.800
call him carry mine on this shoulder because I couldn't deconstruct why I didn't have friends and

812
01:08:09.800 --> 01:08:16.840
everybody else did. Right. Okay. So looking back, would I have rather had the friends and had the

813
01:08:16.840 --> 01:08:23.080
brother or sister and not develop this skill? I can't split test life. So I don't know. Right.

814
01:08:23.080 --> 01:08:29.560
But my life sounded it pretty good and I'm happy with it. So I need to not only look back at that

815
01:08:29.560 --> 01:08:36.760
stuff as something not to hate, but something to genuinely be thankful for. And that is frankly

816
01:08:36.760 --> 01:08:45.880
something I'm still working through. Yeah, it goes back to the first thing, which is like the

817
01:08:45.880 --> 01:08:50.520
most traumatic events that happen in our life. You know, they happen for us, not to us. But when you

818
01:08:50.520 --> 01:08:55.560
expand the time horizon, like those things and to be fair, there are people who do have really

819
01:08:55.560 --> 01:08:58.840
crappy things happen to them and then it destroys them. And then that's it. And then they're just

820
01:08:58.840 --> 01:09:03.480
done. And that's all it is. Not everyone has like a moderate amount of childhood bullying and

821
01:09:03.480 --> 01:09:07.320
an only child with like parents that care about them or whatever. Because you were a child

822
01:09:07.960 --> 01:09:14.440
coping with the world with the coping skills of a child. I'm still largely that as an adult infant.

823
01:09:17.640 --> 01:09:22.200
But I think that I mean, to keep the at least for me, you know, my key takeaway from both of these

824
01:09:22.200 --> 01:09:30.040
kind of stories is more that all of the all of the negative things that happen on the micro have

825
01:09:30.040 --> 01:09:37.240
the opportunity if double down on to be huge wins in the macro. And sometimes in ways that just a

826
01:09:37.240 --> 01:09:42.920
micro win would never have the ability to be double down on and become a capital W win in the macro.

827
01:09:44.520 --> 01:09:49.480
This is probably one of the heaviest hammer blows I think today. This next one. This is a real

828
01:09:49.960 --> 01:09:55.320
anger tweeting. No, it's not. It's an existential one. Oh, fun. You've already achieved goals.

829
01:09:55.320 --> 01:10:02.440
You said would make you happy. You've already achieved goals. You said would make you happy.

830
01:10:04.600 --> 01:10:13.560
Alex is notes to sell, right? Because we all know the happiness formula, which is

831
01:10:14.520 --> 01:10:19.800
when this happens, I'll be happy, right? When X I'll be happy or if X I'll be happy.

832
01:10:21.880 --> 01:10:26.280
And so, you know, I've set up that equation. I'm sure I know you've never set up this equation

833
01:10:26.280 --> 01:10:31.320
for yourself in your life. But, you know, I've set that up. And I think that just serves as my biggest

834
01:10:31.320 --> 01:10:37.960
reminder. But it's also why I probably have a pretty existential nihilist overall. Because I've

835
01:10:37.960 --> 01:10:42.520
had so much evidence that none of those things brought me joy. But the things that we were talking

836
01:10:42.600 --> 01:10:47.000
earlier about anticipation being kind of the hot button on pleasure. Yep. I feel like the hot

837
01:10:47.000 --> 01:10:50.840
button on joy for me is what I'm doing right now. So, like, I haven't done the event yet.

838
01:10:51.400 --> 01:10:56.440
Right? I haven't I haven't given the presentation. But when I'm in the rocky cut scene of like

839
01:10:56.440 --> 01:11:03.720
of beating, I'm not going to say, beating the cow carcass, I'll say that. I'm trying to avoid

840
01:11:03.720 --> 01:11:08.680
certain words. Anyways, that when I'm when I'm when I'm when I'm putting that work in and doing

841
01:11:08.680 --> 01:11:15.560
the reps, like that's when I'm actually my most in flow and enjoying myself the most. And so,

842
01:11:15.560 --> 01:11:20.200
it's actually a lie that I've been telling myself that like once the presentation goes well,

843
01:11:20.200 --> 01:11:24.760
I'll feel good. Because in some ways, now I feel like when the presentation happens,

844
01:11:24.760 --> 01:11:28.840
I'll be disappointed because I won't get to do this anymore. I'll have to find something else

845
01:11:28.840 --> 01:11:33.400
to pick as a target so that I can get back into my rocky cut scene. And so, I think that that

846
01:11:33.400 --> 01:11:36.760
that has taken some time and I've gotten better at it. I really do think I've gotten a lot better

847
01:11:37.720 --> 01:11:42.600
at it, at least recognizing because the more the more times I've I've had W's and then realized

848
01:11:42.600 --> 01:11:46.680
that right afterwards, I felt nothing. I had to think back of like, what are the things that I

849
01:11:46.680 --> 01:11:53.480
enjoyed most in my life? And it's always in pursuit. And I'm like, well, then why don't I set something

850
01:11:53.480 --> 01:11:58.040
really big really far so I can be in pursuit for the longest period of time possible? And that's

851
01:11:58.040 --> 01:12:02.280
where I think a lot of people from the outside, you know, they cast their expectations of life onto me

852
01:12:02.280 --> 01:12:05.720
and say, I wouldn't live my life that way. You're always you're always working. You're always doing

853
01:12:05.720 --> 01:12:11.080
these things. But it's like, I'm actually always spending my time in pursuit because in pursuit

854
01:12:11.080 --> 01:12:19.160
is my button for enjoyment. Well, what about if it wasn't achieving the thing at the end? If the

855
01:12:19.160 --> 01:12:24.360
reason that you set yourself goals is exclusively to motivate yourself to enjoy the route to what

856
01:12:24.360 --> 01:12:30.600
those goals? And I know that it's not the destination. It's the journey is kind of cliche. And I think

857
01:12:30.600 --> 01:12:38.680
this is is slightly suddenly different, which is that it's actually about setting the destination.

858
01:12:38.680 --> 01:12:43.320
Without the destination, you wouldn't do the journey. Like the way that you set goals and then

859
01:12:43.320 --> 01:12:48.600
achieve them and the dopamine and the the trigger that you get. I often think about the balance

860
01:12:48.600 --> 01:12:52.920
between like serotonin, chris and dopamine, chris. And I don't know the difference between that.

861
01:12:52.920 --> 01:12:58.200
It's like, am I feeling sort of lovey and present and wanting to connect with people?

862
01:12:58.200 --> 01:13:02.920
Or am I driving toward a thing because I have a goal that's in front of me? And I'm very sort of

863
01:13:02.920 --> 01:13:10.440
dopamine chris a lot of the time. But I genuinely think that if you remind yourself, these are the

864
01:13:10.440 --> 01:13:18.520
golden years. Like this right now, this when you look back, these will be the golden years, right?

865
01:13:18.520 --> 01:13:23.960
When I had my health, I had my full mental capacity, I had control of my bladder, I had all of the

866
01:13:23.960 --> 01:13:29.000
money that I needed to do the things that I wanted to crush it with my friends to fly around

867
01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:34.600
America and film these podcasts or to launch this book that I spend all of this time on.

868
01:13:34.600 --> 01:13:37.800
And you can even see it in the micro. You can even see it when you look back on

869
01:13:38.520 --> 01:13:41.720
stuff that you've done in your day to day business or when you did at university.

870
01:13:42.680 --> 01:13:45.880
What were the times that you enjoyed? Was it when success came to you easily?

871
01:13:45.880 --> 01:13:49.960
Or was it when you stayed up and all the dominoes because you had that project that needed to be

872
01:13:50.040 --> 01:13:54.680
in at six in the morning and you ran an all nighter and John slept under the table and

873
01:13:54.680 --> 01:13:58.920
everybody ordered monsters and then the next morning we got it done. What was good about that?

874
01:13:58.920 --> 01:14:03.640
Was it when you submitted it? Or was it the dominoes and the 3 a.m. sleep under the table?

875
01:14:03.640 --> 01:14:05.400
Because I'm pretty sure it's that.

876
01:14:09.240 --> 01:14:18.360
I love this as a side note. But one of the things that really motivates me, or one of my most

877
01:14:18.360 --> 01:14:23.160
powerful motivational frames, is thinking about the person that I want to become as the destination.

878
01:14:23.960 --> 01:14:29.480
And thinking like, I want to be bulletproof. I want to be bulletproof in these ways. I want to be

879
01:14:29.480 --> 01:14:35.160
bulletproof in my marriage. I want to be bulletproof in my business, etc. And I think about

880
01:14:35.160 --> 01:14:39.000
that man, whoever I want him to be. Like we said, hell is when you look at who you could have been.

881
01:14:39.800 --> 01:14:44.040
And realize that you're not that person. And then I think if I were to make that man,

882
01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:48.280
what would I put that man through to make him who he is?

883
01:14:49.320 --> 01:14:54.440
Like it wouldn't be easy times. It wouldn't be quick wins. It wouldn't even be easy wins.

884
01:14:55.320 --> 01:15:00.280
It would be the the toil and the struggle of achieving and reaching for things

885
01:15:03.320 --> 01:15:08.040
that are right out of grasp, that are right above my threshold. And continuing to do that to

886
01:15:08.040 --> 01:15:11.400
like lift the weight to build the muscle to break it down and do it over and over again,

887
01:15:11.400 --> 01:15:14.680
because like that's what creates the character traits that are the man that I want to be.

888
01:15:15.400 --> 01:15:19.320
And so when I'm going through those like really harder times, I like to think of

889
01:15:20.360 --> 01:15:25.240
like looking in my mental mirror of like I'm making you, I'm not there yet, but I'm making you.

890
01:15:26.040 --> 01:15:31.880
And that has helped me get through some of the harder times. And from a gratitude perspective,

891
01:15:32.760 --> 01:15:39.400
my my most powerful frame for gratitude has been thinking about my 85 year old self, waking up

892
01:15:39.400 --> 01:15:44.520
as my 30 year old self. And all of a sudden looking at Layla and be like, man, I remember when

893
01:15:44.520 --> 01:15:49.240
we were this young and then looking out the window and be like, man, Vegas wasn't even developed.

894
01:15:49.240 --> 01:15:53.320
Like there's no flying cars yet. Like man, they were still used gas. Like this is so cool.

895
01:15:53.320 --> 01:15:57.640
And I get out of bed and I'm like, and my elbows don't hurt, my knees don't hurt, right?

896
01:15:57.640 --> 01:16:01.480
Because I'm thinking about my 85 year old self would think. And you know, we're talking about

897
01:16:01.480 --> 01:16:07.240
whatever, but it allows me to enjoy the mundane in a way that I know that I would give everything

898
01:16:07.240 --> 01:16:12.520
that I had when I was 85 to enjoy again. And it's just, it's a, it's a trippy frame. But like if

899
01:16:12.520 --> 01:16:17.080
you can think like, what would 85, 85 year old me would be like, I'm just not, my body doesn't hurt.

900
01:16:17.080 --> 01:16:21.080
You know what I mean? Like I actually have energy. Like I can think clearly. I don't have brain fog

901
01:16:21.080 --> 01:16:27.640
because I'm 85, right? And that has been probably my single most powerful frame on feeling grateful.

902
01:16:27.640 --> 01:16:31.320
And allowed me to feel more present at times when I start, like when I start to feel like I'm

903
01:16:31.320 --> 01:16:34.920
going through the motions and just like clicking in the routine and just like day after day after day

904
01:16:34.920 --> 01:16:38.680
and they feel the same, that's been my biggest slowdown where I can pull the reins and be like,

905
01:16:39.560 --> 01:16:44.520
just in my mind, it lasts a few minutes. But when I think back on the days where I,

906
01:16:44.520 --> 01:16:48.680
when I use that frame, the part of the day that I remember is just a few minutes there. I use it.

907
01:16:48.680 --> 01:16:53.000
So I did this episode with Sam Harris. A lot of people have problems with Sam Harris.

908
01:16:53.560 --> 01:16:59.800
I found the time that I spent with him unbelievably enjoyable. I sat opposite him and a couple

909
01:16:59.800 --> 01:17:05.560
of times caught myself thinking, I am having so much fun doing this. And he said this thing and

910
01:17:05.560 --> 01:17:10.840
I really wish that I'd asked him another question. I should email him about it. I was talking about

911
01:17:10.840 --> 01:17:15.800
presence and the importance of presence and he could use it as a proxy for gratitude. And he said

912
01:17:15.800 --> 01:17:25.480
that really what you're aiming to do is find small moments in the day when you just open up and

913
01:17:25.480 --> 01:17:33.720
realize what's happening. Right? Conor McGregor won the featherweight title twice because he won

914
01:17:33.720 --> 01:17:39.320
the interim because Aldo was injured and then he won against Aldo. And somebody asked him,

915
01:17:40.200 --> 01:17:44.040
what are you going to do differently this time? Before the Aldo fight that he didn't do against

916
01:17:44.040 --> 01:17:49.160
the men in the men does fight. He says, this time I'm going to be present. And there's this photo of

917
01:17:49.640 --> 01:17:57.000
him and he's stood like this at the weigh in and you've got this entire stadium in front of him

918
01:17:57.000 --> 01:18:00.440
and he's stood like that. He said the first time he did it, you couldn't remember it because he was

919
01:18:00.440 --> 01:18:08.840
just drowning in what was next. And what I really loved that Sam said and I think that

920
01:18:09.960 --> 01:18:13.080
you know, you look at somebody that's a master meditator or you set yourself high bars for what

921
01:18:13.080 --> 01:18:18.120
it means to be mindful and you realize that you can be present with a sip of a coffee.

922
01:18:18.120 --> 01:18:23.160
Okay, I can be present with this one sip of a coffee and then it like sand in your hands or like

923
01:18:23.160 --> 01:18:29.240
trying to remember a dream it just evaporates. Right? Okay, well, what if your goal was just to try and

924
01:18:29.240 --> 01:18:36.920
get five of those a day? What if that was it? What if being mindful was just five moments when

925
01:18:37.720 --> 01:18:43.320
you allow yourself to be where your feet are? Where your feet are underneath you? And then what if

926
01:18:43.480 --> 01:18:50.120
you tried to just string like two of those together five times a day, like just this first sip

927
01:18:50.120 --> 01:18:54.520
and then as I put it down the view out of the window, oh my god, like that's two things in one

928
01:18:54.520 --> 01:19:00.840
and then I can do that five times. And if I'd asked him, I would have said, really is the path

929
01:19:00.840 --> 01:19:04.120
to just increase the frequency of the times that you are where your feet are underneath you?

930
01:19:05.320 --> 01:19:10.680
And one other cue that I love that I got from an embodiment coach is the times when you see in

931
01:19:10.680 --> 01:19:14.840
your peripheral vision, you're looking and the way that our vision actually works, your focus is so

932
01:19:14.840 --> 01:19:19.880
heavily on what's directly in front of you. If there's ever a time when you see what's out here,

933
01:19:21.160 --> 01:19:25.480
you realize that it's impossible to see all of that and not be in the present moment because you

934
01:19:25.480 --> 01:19:30.280
naturally just open yourself up and I love that cue. So during the times when I'm doing things,

935
01:19:30.280 --> 01:19:33.800
like that's some episode, I mean, the next question and there's a million to people watching

936
01:19:33.800 --> 01:19:36.360
and all this stuff and there's this guy in front of me in his super smart or whatever.

937
01:19:36.680 --> 01:19:44.200
This is fucking cool. Just that one moment and that when I look back on that episode, that's

938
01:19:44.200 --> 01:19:49.240
what I enjoyed. That's what I enjoyed about it. So I think that being where your feet are underneath

939
01:19:49.240 --> 01:19:54.200
you and allowing yourself to open up and stringing those together, largely allows you to

940
01:19:55.800 --> 01:20:01.240
enjoy being whilst you're in the process of becoming. It's also interesting

941
01:20:01.960 --> 01:20:08.040
I mean, those moments, you can capture a moment independent from your surroundings because a lot

942
01:20:08.040 --> 01:20:11.880
of times those moments, you're not thinking about the goal that you have, the meeting that you have,

943
01:20:11.880 --> 01:20:18.440
the prep that you have to do for some talk or some podcast or whatever it is and a camera

944
01:20:18.440 --> 01:20:24.040
where I heard this but they were talking about Gladiator, the movie and the film opens with this

945
01:20:24.040 --> 01:20:30.040
little bird on a bow, with the leaves and whatnot. And then they zoom out from that little bird

946
01:20:30.200 --> 01:20:38.600
on the on the on the bow and it's this disgusting war scene. Right. And so it's kind of like

947
01:20:38.600 --> 01:20:45.960
micro macro micro of how no matter how tough whatever the moment that you're going through is,

948
01:20:46.600 --> 01:20:52.200
if you can just take a picture of the corner of the room and look at the beauty in that,

949
01:20:52.200 --> 01:20:56.360
right, of being present in that moment, even if it's the suffering, right, like you get punched

950
01:20:56.360 --> 01:21:00.920
and you're spitting blood out, but it's like this moment that you capture, then all of a sudden like

951
01:21:00.920 --> 01:21:06.840
everything fades away and you are present. And so it can take this, what would be a brutal war scene

952
01:21:06.840 --> 01:21:15.320
of death and dismemberment. And the thing that makes it memorable is the zooming in on a detail.

953
01:21:15.320 --> 01:21:18.600
And so it's like if we're going, if you feel like you're going through life too fast, it's like just

954
01:21:18.600 --> 01:21:28.600
look for a detail.