Danny Jones Podcast - #26 - Social Media Dope Dealer | Ed Latimore

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Ed Latimore is a professional heavyweight boxer, physics major, philosopher, and writer, . He's the best selling author of "Not Caring What Anyone Thinks Is A Superpower",  "Sober Letters to my Drunken Self" and "Engagement is the New Cocaine." https://edlatimore.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for doing this man. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming. The last minute guys come. Yeah, it is not last minute. It's okay. Some of the last minute ones end up being the best ones. For people out there listening, give me sort of like a brief background on who you are and where you came from. So I'm Ahmed Lattimore.

I am. I write a lot of material. I say my model on my website and for all the content I create is I take what I learn the hard way. and I break it down so you can learn it the easy way. And some of the things I'll learn via, you know, the hard way moderation and self-control, dealing with my alcoholism. I have a lot of articles about dealing with that, becoming sober, becoming sober and socializing. Some of the things you'll have to face and deal with the demons that you may not be prepared for, prepared to deal with.

I'll write a lot about just improving yourself in general. I also write about growing on social media. we were just talking about the whole SEO idea. And to me, it seems like a really intuitive and automatic kind of thing. Like, okay, if I say a thing and I capture it his attention and how do I make it grow? And I'm really big on doing it without being a troll. Like I don't talk about politics. I don't put people down.

I don't try to put any negativity out in the world. I'm a firm believer. And if you deliver value via entertainment or education, that people will come and find you, however you have done the work to be a valuable person. So people don't just go, oh, this is another guy. spouting off Thomas wisdom I know

yeah it's very oversaturated on social media right now with people you know being gurus of this that and the third freaking entrepreneurial gurus Gary V's all those guys there's so many of them

everyone wants to do it because they just see these guys saying these things and they forget like I'm not like 100% familiar with like Gary V's story but I know that Gary Vee didn't wake up one day and go I want to spout

off a bunch of things and made money he was like no he wouldn't made money first and then came and said okay here's some lessons to take from it and decided that was another cool place he wants to be and and i think that's just a natural extension of any type of hard work that a person does they end up there one way or the other because after you have done some things you get enough questions about said things and some people motivate to teach uh in one way or the other whether it'd be one-on-one or to a group there's always some way some way you want to distribute value yeah redistribute value you actually say to people who you believe, you know, kind of helped you come up. But that's, that's me on my website.

Okay. And a lot of things that I did outside of that beforehand is we talked about, you know, how you gain this ability to say stuff that people listen to and take seriously. I box professionally for six years, amateur for five before that. Wow. I had a great, great time, great career, especially as an amateur. I went further than I thought I would go as an amateur because I started late. I didn't walk into a gym until I was 22, which is ancient, but the advantage is...

For boxing, that's ancient, right? That's a dinosaur, man. But the advantage is that I'm a heavyweight, and what people have to understand is if you start boxing when you're a kid and you just keep out of it with the training and everything, you're probably... Not probably me. You're just unless you're like six, six or taller, you're not going to put the mass on naturally. So I was off doing other sports and getting stronger and I decided to go boxing. I mean, you look at the top guys. Deonti Waters older.

I started older than me at that too. I believe that so is Joshua the there's another another guy out there. I can't remember his name right now. Come to me. But a lot of guys at the heavier weight divisions, they not only start later, but then it can last longer. One of my favorite guys that I watch who's, you know, recently is a guy named Amir Mansur. Mir Mansour. Mareemantz was killing guys, right?

Yeah. And the ring is just dropping them. And then, unfortunately, Amir was out there doing some crimes and got, got pinched. I believe in something related to drugs. Yeah. And it went away for 10 years. Didn't get out because I'm looking at this box wreck where you can see everyone's record. I'm like, man, what happened to Amir?

10 years out comes right back out at 37 and starts killing it. Fatoi was 45. Really? Wow. And he did a great job. I mean, the only fights I saw him rightfully lose, maybe one. He lost one fight that would have got him a title shot. because he bit through his tongue and just couldn't continue.

That kind of thing was awful. But yeah, when you start heavy boxing, you can go a little later. But I didn't have any, like, natural athletic ability, I think. And I went really far with that. I had a great time. And then I got my success as an amateur help me move well as a pro until, you know, I went on as far as I could at the time. And also while I was doing that, I was enlisted in the Army because,

and I enlisted because I figured I don't have any skills. It was outside of boxing. Like I had just been, you know, I've been spending the past decade beating up people and not really gained anything. And I know I can't beat up people forever. Not only that, but there's not that much money in the sport. People think we're getting paid. I mean, my highest payday was not even five figures, like, to put that in perspective

and that's standard. I think Carl Frotch, he's a champion. He did some research on this and put it together. And he said that 97% of fighters are going to have. have to get a job. Really? After they quit. And not just like, oh, they're not doing anything.

No, you got to get, there's no unions. Someone cares about the fighter. It's very much a gladiator kind of bottom of the barrel sport. A lot of gyms are on poor neighborhoods, and that is not a coincidence. It's cheap. How mean, what do you need? You need gloves and aggression. I mean, a ring is optional, especially when you're coming up as an amateur.

You know, you compete in one, but I've been to some gyms where, like, quite literally, it's in a corner of a warehouse and someone took and used those two walls. The corner is two sides of the square. And the other two, they put some rope around and that was all they had. So you see that a lot in the sport. And I just, I had an experience, this one experience. I was walking from the gym when I was an amateur. And for whatever reason, I left my phone and my iPod at home.

And that kept me looking forward. So I could see when somebody's car came up and lost control off the sidewalk. And I jumped out the way and I was like, huh, that was close. I could lose boxing at any time. Let me do something else with my life and start building that up. Plus, there was just the pain points and everything. So, you know, I went and got my degree in physics.

All I was busy being a pro and enlisted in the military. And I chose physics for lots of other reasons. Yeah, why physics? That wasn't the original goal. The original goal was math. And I chose math because I thought that I was going to have to go to school. Or I thought I was going to have to work while I was boxing and go to school, right? So I'm already planning to be super busy. And what ends up

happening is I go to the military. And the reason I figure I'm busy is because they're going to be lab sciences and any of the other sciences. And I looked at like where all the high paying jobs were and they all need a math. So I said, okay, you got to learn math. That's just what's got to happen. I go. And in my military, my occupational specialty, my MOS for the military was 94 alpha. And that means I had to go do a lot of work with electronics. And as part of my trainer, I went through this thing called B-Man and Fort Lee, basic mechanical and electronic theory. And I was like, oh, this is even cooler.

I think I want to be an electrical engineer. And all the engineers have to take physics. And so I take physics when I start class. And my first physics class, you got to do this thing with projectile motion. You got to predict where a pellet is going to land with no other forces acting it, but gravity and the initial acceleration. Right. And it landed where I said it was going to land.

And I said, yo, that's like magic. I want to do that instead. And so that's how I ended up there. I mean, that's pretty crazy. I stuck with it because I don't really understand the idea of quitting. I understand being beat out of something. That's how I approached boxing. I said, I'm going to go as long as I can.

Someone's going to have to tell me I suck or I'm going to have to get injured. Okay. And what ended up happening is I got injured as a pro. And then my coach was like, dude, my coach. Oh, he's like, man, you're doing all this stuff. Your life is great. Why are you still here? Like, do you understand that every time you walk in the ring,

you have a chance of being permanently altered in a way that can alter your life and not in a positive direction? I mean, he didn't say it exactly like that, but that's kind of how I filtered it. Basically, he's like, you know, I'm your friend. I care about you. I don't you don't need to do this anymore and so I walked away from that and really put a lot more energy into my website and then my writing and things and my chess game too which is your chess game yeah yeah I started I started competing in chess this year this year. I love I love chess table. I know we should have one of them. We I love playing chess. I suck so bad. I mean you know what I'm like I was like well and was progressing from it. You know, where I was, where I'm now. Yeah.

I really wanted to take it seriously. I'd always kind of just been playing on chess.com. So I said, okay, if I'm going to talk about chess on social media, and I'm always going to say how much I love it, then I have to go and start competing OTB over the board. So I started registering tournaments and working on my game. And then that led to me getting a coach who found out. And he is a great coach, Eric Kisleck, for anybody.

listening who's looking for a international master he he he's gained that title and he's really he he I understand the game better like like I just I mean I told him what was wrong and I was like this is where I'm frustrated and I don't know what to do here and I feel lost when these things come up and you say it's okay breaks and he breaks he's got all these because because a good teacher gets used to seeing the same problems in the students over and over again And he, in chess, it was no different. He actually had this thing drawn up. He's like, here's what you're going to do in the semi-open and open positions.

Ask yourself these questions, see what it looks like here. And I'm like, and it changed my entire way looking at the game. Because before I was like, I make this move. And he makes that move. And I kind of had an idea that there was a strategy element, a planning element, but I didn't really get it. And now I see, because no one's looking far ahead. I mean, I can't remember what Grand Master said it, but a famous quote is,

I don't look three moves ahead. I think about the next move and I make the correct move every time. And I was like, wow, that's, that's profound. And that's what it is because I'm looking at the game and I'm going, okay, I see all of this stuff, what are I focus on? And Eric's work gave me a way to look at the game and go, I can focus on it. So now my chest.com ratings are all over 15. and one is over 16.

That's good. That's like, you know, my 30-minute game, my three-day game, my blitz game in 10 or five minutes. And it'll keep getting stronger because I know it's not going to, you know, happen overnight and I'll get as good as I can. Maybe my limit is like 1,800 and I'll never get a title. Or maybe I could be a GM. I don't know.

I probably can't be a GM. Those guys mean. We used to play with this guy. There was a guy across the street from our old office in St. Petersburg. This guy, he would come and hustle me. playing chess. Larry. His name was Larry. Shout out to Larry. Um, and he'd make me buy him. I don't, I forgot. What I bought him? Like, cigarette. Just buy a beer. If he beat us, we would have to buy him a beer from the store. If I beat you, you got to buy me a beer. That's what it would

be. And the dude, he would beat me in, in less than five minutes every time. Um, he was, like, phenomenal at chess. I remember asking him, like, how, how do you think that far ahead? I'm like, I can't even think two steps ahead. And you're thinking literally like 20 steps ahead. How do you it. And he's just like, his response was, I've done it. I've played the game so many times. I know every way it can go. That's basically it was like, I can't really think that far ahead. I've just seen this before. You just, I don't know if he was actually doing that. I mean, we all think a lot of times when we're successful, we have an explanation for it. And that explanation is an approximation filter through what we know and our level of understanding of like how we

we learn a thing or how a thing works. So, sure, he thinks he is looking ahead. But the reality is, I mean, it's just there's probably common mistakes or patterns or whatever. But chess is like, it's not the best analogy for life. I think poker or pros fighting is probably the best analogy for life. But chess is a pretty good analogy for life or certain parts of it. Because you're not necessarily able to see into the future.

But what you can do is take a survey of the current landscape and go, okay, I'm weak here, I'm strong there. This is a little behind. I need to get caught up there. He's got space over there, so let me, let me develop over here and kind of stay away from those problem areas. And then you just make the correct move over time, overtime, and eventually you get into a winning position.

Now there's a critical moment. They don't make themselves obvious, right? I mean, sometimes they do, but most times it's not going to be an outright. Ooh, there's a checkmate. I'm saying, no, it's like, you, now you, you have a chance to turn a possible even position into something where you have an advantage. And then from there, you can, you know, if you continue to play well, you crush the game. Magnus Carlson, the current world champion says, my goal every time is to play 30 good moves.

That's it. Really? 30 good moves. Because there's that idea again. I'm not seeing ahead. Now, I'm sure, like, he's got tons of patterns in his mind. He kind of knows where some things go, somethings won't. but that sums up this thinking and it's a really great analogy.

It's not that I'm looking six years ahead. I used to say when I went back to school when I was, when I was 20, I used to say five years are going to pass anywhere, right? Am I going to, am I going to get, am I going to turn 33 with more options or less options? I didn't know exactly what the options were.

Someone asked me yesterday at the conference, they were like, you know, did you know that you were going to be standing on this stage speaking to us? I'm like, no, I had no idea. In fact, if you want to know exactly what I was thinking, I said, okay, when I was doing that, I said the average salary for someone with physics is like 60,000, but the variance was incredible because there's so many things you can do with a physics degree. And I said, I'm going to get something interesting.

And I'll be doing like 80K and it's going to be a great job and I have a great life because I can finally eat whenever I want to. That's always what my goal is like, I just want to be able to not look at the price of the menu. Right. Like, not even bawling either. Not like a Ruth Chris steakhouse, man. Like, I just wanted to go out and get some Chinese food. Not thinking about whether my car was going to be declined or something like that, right?

That was just the initial goal. So I made the right move when I looked at all the things that were hold me back. And I said, okay, well, I got pretty good discipline, pretty good communicating. I can work hard too. I mean, I will make sure I'll learn something. But I just keep losing time with the bar. I just keep losing time being drunk all the time and hungover. So let me do some about that.

And I said, okay, you know, we're going to be sober. We're going to do it out, try it out. I gave myself every every possible advantage I could. I went to an AA meeting. I told my friends, I said, look, man, texted all my friends. I said, look, I love you guys, but I'm scared. And I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to make anything in my life. Or maybe I hurt somebody if I keep drinking.

And I mean, and when I say, I mean, I, I, I mean, I may be understating how bad it was, right? Right. But no, it was bad enough to where I was worried. And I gave myself every single. I immersed myself completely. If it wasn't school, it was the Army. If it wasn't the gym.

And if it wasn't that, me and my girl was doing something, I was playing with my cats. I wouldn't let anything derail me. That was recognizing that one little weakness, right? And then from there, I'm able to make things happen. able to do work but but and and it's important because I didn't I didn't know I was going to write a book about sobriety for example I had zero idea but that book has opened up opportunities

for me and how did it get started well I had to be sober first right right right and then I had to have a platform where people even cared yeah I thought it was interesting one of your talks I was listening to like people ask me who I am I'm just a sober guy yeah I thought that was pretty funny Yeah, and these things, they just, they keep coming together. I can build the platform because I'm not out being drunk all the time and people care about the platform because I've done other things in my life. And why can I do those other things in my life? Because, oh, I'm not out being drunk all the time. It all comes back to just making that correct move and looking forward.

You know, when I lost the fight, we were talking about before the, before we started. When I lost the fight, I lost all. Scoot a little bit, a little bit closer. I lost all the money, all the money, you know, and it wasn't a lot of it, but I was dependent on it. And I entered a dilemma. The dilemma was, well, okay, I want to finish school because I wasn't done. I took time off when that happened. And I entered, I need to go back to school.

But I need to make enough money to pay my rent. And I needed enough time to go to school. So I can't work full time and get a full-time salary, but part-time is not going to pay me anything. tried internships. No one would give me anything despite all the credentials and the military advantage, whatever. But here I am now. What's interesting. So I was grinding for the past two and a half years. And in that grind, I got closer to my coach and his family. And I also had my physics and math background. And so my coach's wife says, if he can tutor math and physics, we might have something for them at the university at the high school she was a guidance counselor at

and i said wait that's all like a tutor man i don't know anything else right this point and so at that point i'm able to take on clients at 35 then 40 then 45 and 50 i had to start raising my price because right no one else could do it's the only way to scale yeah normally there are lots of tutors for lots of things right but the people who can do the math and the physics you know most of them have jobs so this is this weird kind of opening gap and it's the whole hardest subject for kids to pick up. So everyone needs help. And then they're in the right environment to be able to afford the prices that,

you know, keep me eating and living. But how did that start? I had an out now. You can get yourself into a bad situation. But if you've been taking the correct steps before, it's easier to survive. If I had just, imagine if I had just been boxing, doing nothing else with my life, just party and being a fool after every fight. And then I lose anyway.

I didn't get that many options to have recovered, to go forward. Then I just go back to doing whatever. Maybe he was actually, I actually took a job, right? Because all I knew was a job, right? This whole like working for myself thing, that experience of losing that fight, that was my baptism by fire. Like, I had to learn how to make money. Like, because prior to that experience, I was just used to people giving me money for my time slash service. I didn't understand the concept of value generation and value acquisition and exchange.

I took a job before I sort of tutoring where I was delivering packages for Amazon. And every time I'm in a nice neighborhood, because that's what it was. We go to the facility. They load up the truck. We had to be at the facility about 5 a.m. And then they didn't want us on the road after sundown. I didn't used to think that was because they cared about us. And now I know it's just because they didn't want a lawsuit.

And I'll get to why I know that Just the more But I do this and they give me a route They said this is the part of the city you're in Go for it And it was always a really nice neighborhood And now every time I drive through a nice neighborhood I don't think I want to live there

I don't think oh this is an ambition Like this is a driving force I think I get cold Because I lost a fight in September And then the money ran out And then I got the job in December because it was the holidays. Everyone, they always look, man, anyone listening. If you need a quick hustle and you're in the city, Amazon is always looking for people.

Like, and there's tons of shifts because people are bond more and they send more stuff. They need more bodies. Right. And I was one of those bodies. And I did that. And I got, I mean, I just think cold. I'm like, ooh. And I go, man, I'm so happy that I'm not there anymore.

But how do I know that they just want to avoid a lawsuit and that limitation on? the hours to work. How do I know that's not an altruistic thing? So I was delivering packages one day. This was my last day, by the way. I was delivering packages one day. And I get out and the car, there was a malfunction and the transmission gives and it rolls down the hill.

Thank goodness it was like 6.30 in the morning. No one was outside. And I actually rolled into someone's garage like the outer part of the garage. So everyone was all good. Yeah. And what did they do? They sent another driver out. I was like, oh, man, they're going to rescue me.

They're like, all right, get your packages and load them into this truck. We got to finish this route. I'm like, hold up. Y'all don't want to know if I was drinking? Like, no, because that's what's supposed to happen on any type of accident involving vehicles and jobs. They're supposed to, you know, make sure you're not drinking and talk to you like right there. No, we're right on the road. Start delivering stuff.

And then we finish it And this is what I was like Okay, this is unacceptable I got to do something else I had to just listen to this woman all day You ever know you know those people that just Everything is like I wish they would And then they do it and nothing happens

Yeah yeah yeah It was that kind of thing It was like you know They complain about the row She's talking about she's gonna quit This other and I got a feeling About halfway through I was like This is every day

So they gave me the day Okay. The next day. So, and then he said, are you going to come in? They was like, you know what? This is it for me, man. It was only like $11 an hour. I said, I'll, I said, at that point, I'll figure this out.

I don't know how I'm figured out, but at that point, I knew I had to. So that's how you kind of get it. Was this in Pittsburgh? This was in Pittsburgh. Wow. And then, you know, it, my life always flashes for my eyes when I think about it. Because I think, what if I had been like right behind that? What if there had been some people out or something like that?

And I just go, you know what? I'm not going to ignore it. Like, like, I'm a big, not a big believer, I guess. I have a moderate level of belief in the idea that there are signs from the universe. And maybe those signs aren't forward acting. It's not like you're someone saying, do this, do this. No, it's like, okay, here's what happened. You got a choice now.

And if you make the right choice, this ain't going to happen again. If you make the wrong choice, not only is this probably going to happen again, but it's probably going to happen worse or at least exact a steeper toll from you if you don't do it because what do they say? You know, if you don't learn a lesson, you're just going to keep getting the test over and over again until you learn the lesson. Right. And as long as you don't learn it, you can't graduate to the next level.

So I think I learned the lesson. Wow. I loved the analogy you made on that one talk that you did about the mountain climber. Don't be the, don't worry about being, don't be the mountain. You want to be the mountain climber. Oh, yeah. That really, that really inspired me. I liked that one.

Can you explain it? Can you explain that one? Oh, for sure. You know, I think a lot of times people let things just happen to them as opposed to, making things happen. It's the whole, are you a subject or you're an object, or my favorite way to put it, if you ever seen The Departed at the beginning

when Jack Nicholas is like, everyone says, you know, you're a product of your environment, but I want my environment to be a product of me. And that, I mean, first of all, I love that movie in general. But that is one of those things that just really six for you, that idea that you're not,

you're not a passive, kind of participant or just a passive, like, thing in life, you're an active participant. And that was the whole idea behind the mountain versus the mountain climbing. The mountain is passive. People climb the mountain. The mountain is, you know, it is what it is, man. Wherever the mountain is, he's stuck, too. But the mountain climber can move.

We can go up. But what's the tradeoff is that when you climb a mountain, that's a lot of work. There's a lot of risk involved. You can fall. you can get lost. People die, climb the lines all the time. But when you get to the top,

you've done a thing that a lot of people won't never do. They won't even try it. Many of them are terrified. And the ones who do try, they fail for many reasons, many of which, not all,

but many of which are due to their own decisions. You know, sometimes you get unlucky, you put your foot in a cobra hole, and that's it, right? It ain't always that way, but sometimes I'm going, there you go, right? But barring the things that you can't control,

you know, when you maximize control over the things you have the ability to affect and you get to the top of the mountain, you've done a really powerful thing for yourself and for how you see the world. And I think if people do more things that are difficult or challenging, they push themselves to it. Was there a time, Was there a time where you felt you were at the peak? You were at the summit of a mountain and you had like,

you were like really riding high? Oh, yeah, you know, and then. Was that with boxing or? It was with boxing and making money online. Those are the two big examples recently. Yeah. And well, and what boxing, you know, you get humbled. And you get humbled hard too.

You know, you don't just cod to get humbled, right? everyone you know those those that negative feedback will pushes you down quick and and it pushed me I went from being a guy who was like a social media person on there for all my boxing and talking about stuff to a dude delivering packages with Amazon like yeah that is I mean you want to talk about humiliating and then before that right before delivering the package I was actually working in the warehouse right right so I'm just kind of like laying low hoping no one recognizes me well talk about the losers of grandeur right hopefully No one recognizes me, right?

No one cares. You know, everyone's there for their own thing. It's not like anyone. But that is a great example of getting dragged and be thinking you're doing well and you get knocked down. What are you going to do? You're going to get back up. You got to figure out a way to survive. You're just going to take that, right?

I think a lot of people in that situation, and I've seen it, they take that. I was like, this is not good. And I got to get out of here. Same what, you know, I think. again, when I was in school, I was doing really well. I was doing so well and I was so close that I said, I'm going to take four higher level classes at once. It's the last four classes I need to graduate.

It was what was it? Mechanics, electromagnetism, solid state physics, and thermodynamics. I took all that I'm at the same time. And I just, it was killing me. And I said, okay, but I'm going to figure this out, right? because because no one ever admits to themselves how bad it is until they can't and then some people deny it. Other people go, ooh, got to do something. Well, the reports came out and they were like, yo, you're failing all your classes, right?

Teach the call. Like professors that have been following me and talking to me, call me and was like, is anything okay? Is everything okay, whatever? Yeah. And finally, you know, I have to look in the mirror and go, you know what? I can't do this. Let me stop. And I went and told my advisor and she's like, you know, when you told me you wanted to do this,

I didn't think you were going to be able to succeed. I was like, Swadj, you let me do it. She goes, well, I'll try to be supportive and encouraging. And now you know, and plus now we got some feedback on how another, how I can work and all that. But I got dragged and I finished it. I mean, talking about hustle and really busting my ass, but I got in there. And I finished the two classes I kept with a C and I was like, wow, that's really, that drags you. Because now, you know, I have those seas.

And I have no desire to go to grad school. But like, I go, okay. humbled and dragged, humbled and dragged. You make a lot of money, and then your next sale, no one buys anything. That's happened. I mean,

I remember the first time I made five figures in a month, and I said, oh, I'm the man, right? Let me just do this again, the same way. And I try, and I barely cracked four. And then you're like,

you feel sick. You wonder what happened. You wonder what did. And then I started asking, that I get lucky or I'm just bad and you start questioning yourself and but a lot of guys they don't may move forward they don't and they don't seek outside help I think that's like the biggest issue there too right like like back to the mountain climbing analogy if you're climbing the mountain and you and your gears busted there's a hole in your parker man you bought the die

you out of food and another guy comes about looking on all shiny and clean and he's like hey man Do you need some help? If you're prox, no, I'm good. Meanwhile, you like bleeding out of you. It's just a matter of time. You know, whatever. The help was offered and then you passed and now suffer. But if you go, dude, I am in bad shape.

Help me. Right. And I try to do that whenever I can now because the more times you ride high and get knocked down. And it happens a lot of what? Because I'm sure something great is going to happen again. I'm going to feel like I'm king of the world. I'm getting knocked down. You know what the difference between now, though,

when it happens as an adult with some experience with this cycle versus being a teenage or not even teenagers, the younger adult, is that now I don't boast, brag, whatever. I just kind of go, ooh, looking kind of nice today. Let's hope this continues. And go away. But like, you know, one of the things I did, you know, when I fought on TV, I went and told everybody and then I just kept telling them over text, over social media, whatever.

I mean, you lose in front of the whole world and a really embarrassing fashion. And that flips the script entirely because, look, if you hadn't done that, if I hadn't told everyone, realistically, no, most people wouldn't have known, right? Right. I would love to think everyone is tuning in, but realistically most people want to know. So I brought all that pressure on. And now it's like, oh, I got to deal with that. I got to deal with how I feel about it.

You know, fortunately, I wrote in an article, you know, eight things I learned losing on TV. And one of the things I said was that heaven and hell are like analogous to what happens when life is going good and life is going poorly. And when life is going poorly, you get the type of attention and energy you put out into the universe when things were going well. And if you want to be, if you want to take that even less abstract,

how you treat people when you don't have to treat them well is how they're going to treat you when you are not going well. And so, and because I'm a big gown like support positivity giving back, very grateful for everything in my life, you know, I didn't have a, I didn't have a bunch of people, you know, killing me. If you watch the social media comments after some of these guys who lose when they're real ahoes, oh, man, it shows you people, people may act nice, but the reality is if you cross, you don't even have to cross somebody. If they just, if they don't like you and you give them reasons that is like you,

they are going on, they just, they're licking their chops for when things go wrong. Oh, yeah. When they go wrong, they are going to. to remind you and they're going to and they'll never be able to forget. Especially on social media too. You know and and I don't bring out the haters at least

not nearly as bad as anyone else on social media. I think in terms of like controversial personalities I'm relatively tame. Yeah. Yeah. And let me tell you. I remember when I when I lost, no one on Twitter really bug me. Not that much

every now and then someone go, oh man, your head must still be ringing from that. When you say when you lost. Did you only lose one time? I only lost one time as a pro. Really? Mm-hmm. I want to hear that story. But professional boxing is this. Oh, there's so much to it. I'll jump ready. So you lost like one televised match.

Yes. Okay. Because, you know, unless you, so everything is like, what have you done and why should we give you this thing? Right. If you've done well, we give you more things and we continue to see if you're worth it and then eventually you get to a point where they're like, okay. Well, we've invested in you, we're going to take our pontiff That's flush back, right? And that's what a good contract does. A good contract should have the fighter.

I hate to say it like this, but this is what it is. A good contract usually puts the fighter in a bit of an indentured server to a position. Right, right. The difference being now that the fighter can walk. Now when the fighter walks on a contract, he can't fight for like not. Now, I've seen nine to 12 months, though, they won't even let you fight anyhow. Really? Oh, yeah.

Afterwards? If you walk on a contract, yeah. Now, if your terms are up or it's like a mutual release, you know, but a lot of times that's just put in there if you act like a, if you act like a bad person, I don't know how, how R-rated my speech can get. I don't just keep it nice in PG-13.

If you act like a really bad person, that's just a way for people to kind of protect their investment and or make your life annoying. But, so I get the contract, a professional contract when I was, and I have to well we're going to break some boxing game down right

I don't know how much you know about boxing but everyone's going to be a nice little okay I know a fair share nice little lesson about the business end of things okay so there are shows and shows who are fighters fight and those shows are put on by promoters and the fighters on those fights are managed by managers and for a while you used to be able to have the manager

and the promoter be the same entity no longer that's just That's illegal. You can't do it anymore. I don't remember what I think it's part of the Muhammad Ali Act, but I'm not, I'm not 100%. Is there a specific reason for that? Well, sure. It creates conflict of interest.

Okay. You know, sometimes that's okay. Well, like if a manager, so what happens, right? So you have a manager and a promoter as acting as one entity, and he brings a fighter on, and he manages one fighter that's going to fight another fighter. and the promoter knows, right? Because how does the promoter get paid? The promoter gets paid when the tickets are sold.

And the manager just gets a cut of the winnings. Okay. So there is no reason if you have both of those guys work together. There's no person fighting to get the highest purse for the fighter because the promoter is always going to take a cut of the whole thing. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So it removes the lever.

And it's really to protect the fighter. I mean, the manager would love to be the promoter, I'm sure. But that's really what it comes down to is that kind of thing. Okay. So those are three big players. The promoter who puts the fights on, the manager who gets the fighter the fight a lot of times. Or is the promoter now they figured out some kind of ways to work around this, but we'll get to that and the fighter. Okay.

All right? So the fighter is always looking to get promoted by a big promoter, top rank, go and boy. those are the two guys that come up to my right now dad's in our zone if you're familiar with any of these guys uh those are the promoters they have these big old shows they have all the they're the ones that sell the tickets put the money up take the risk and then the managers like we're trying to get you signed with a promoter because then a promoter is like okay we want you on right for like you know three shows and we're going to make money with you and all that and the fighters like all right well here I am and here's a cut of my earnings

I'm the one taking out of risk but there you go so the better you fight you're Right. And the better your resume, whether it be through amateur accomplishments like a national title or an Olympic medal or whatever, the sooner you get signed by promoted because everyone must get signed by promoter because the promoter, now this is changing just a little. But the promoter is the one that won their name is on it and they have all the connections like the TV dates, right? Now TVs are becoming a little obsolete because everyone's switching the apps. the zone took a big risk and it really paid off. They have a huge, just a huge base. Nine 99 a month compared to a $100 one-time pay-per-view.

And even if you only have two pay-per-views, that's, you know, $200, as opposed to a a non-99-month thing. And people don't think like that anyway, right? Even they don't break the math now and go, okay, well, it makes, no, all they see is it's only non-99 a month. Of course I get this. Look, man, I've only watched like four of my zone, like, fights, fun. But it's only none and none the month.

I don't think about it. It just comes out of my account. So that's what they want to get. They want to take it because the promoters done all that work to build this platform to have these guys come and fight. And the sooner you get that, that's everyone's goal. Because anyone can fight on a local show. That's what I did.

You fight on these local shows and build up. But what's the local show limited by? Space. You can only get, I mean, what, 500 people maybe into a good venue until you start getting like MGM grand and bigger places, which the big promoters pay for and they take the risk and put up where you can put, you know, 10,000, 15,000 butts in the seat and you can make a lot of money. Yeah. So I didn't get, I just had a manager when I started. And then that manager got me a deal with a promoter. And my promoter

Then put me on all these different shows as they're moving and development For me Somewhat acting like a manager, but not really But because I've worked with a new promoter Rock Nation Sports And they hadn't really They were putting on shows But they were in the meantime developing the fighters

They saw them by letting them fight on other shows Because the promoter doesn't always have to let you fight on someone else's show He's like, I paid for you I'm trying to invest you but they're doing not to develop on these local shows, smaller shows, bring the opponent and pay the opponent and all that good stuff. And then they have a TV date.

So that's how you get on TV. Without a TV date, look, without a TV date or the internet now with Daddy, you got no chance. You'll be fighting for peanuts for your entire career because there's just no way to make more money. And it's crazy when you talk to some fighters

who don't understand this, what I just broke down, who don't understand this, they complain to a local promoter. I have a buddy that's a local promoter. He tells me all the time. He goes, these guys,

they want more money all the time. And I'm like, well, there's very much a cap on how much money you can give them. And they don't understand that. So that's how that goes. The manager,

promoter, and the fighter. Right. And so everyone's dream is to get a promoter with TV dates and a bigger reach or access to bigger venues because that's where the money is,

at least in America. And in Europe, it's a bit different. Yeah. But in Europe, they're not competing with the NFL, the NHL, MLB, and the NBA, the big four. So, so fighting is still, the fighting is just received better. There's just, there's more money. There are more people who watch it. Yeah.

It's on more networks. Way more. And also, this is really awesome, too. The United States, people go, oh, wow, why are we sucking boxing in the Olympics all of a sudden? Well, we're competing again. against countries where one, the best athletes aren't being taken to the grid out or the basketball court, for example. And they also pay for the coaching.

The fighting systems are, the fighting system. The sports are subsidized by the government. So, you know, the story about Ganadi Golovkin, he is a great fighter out of his country. I think Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. It's one or the other. So, you know, people who watch it. I'm like, he's wrong. And Gray Fighter does all these things.

I think he won a medal. I'm not sure. But he wants to go pro and he wants to fight in America. And so, and normally when that happens in America, a fighter stays with the same coach from amateur to professional. Because that makes sense. He put that time in that investment. He trained the kid when the kid quite was not even capable of earning.

Right. He wants to stay. And now he earns and now he gets a cut. Well, not so much in these places where the coach is paid. So he's like, well, I'm not, I'm not leaving. I have a great thing here. You kidding? Yeah, I produced you.

Right. I'm not going to pay me more now. Why would I leave? So he gets, he's got another coach. And, you know, I think his coach is the guy named Abel Sanchez out of California. Really? And like, Abel didn't train him as an amateur. Abel just got him when he was a pro.

Wow. And that's why. Because, and a lot of these guys out of these other countries, man, they do well because they have, they take care of fighters when they train. And that's really important because unlike professionals, amateurs don't earn any money. Right. So they got to do something to earn money. And that something, assuming it's legal, that something takes time away from them, even if it's ill. Right. Takes time away from training.

Right. But they don't have that issue in another country. So it is just walking into a very competitive situation. Wow. I had no idea that the sport was subsidized in countries like that. If you look, I mean, I think what the United States. We don't do that with any sports here, do we? No.

Well, okay. Well, do we? For Olympic level sports, no. But look at it. Look at the way we do our football. football and our baseball. We don't call it subsidizing the sport. What we do is we call it a scholarship.

All right. For college school. Yeah. And, you know, now the NCAA has ruled. And that, dude, I can't. Oh, in California, right? Now Florida, oh, my God.

And now Florida is proposing the same legislation. Really? Which is a big deal. That's huge. When California did it, the NCAA was like, okay, you're big California. But we're not going to allow you to participate. if you do this and they did it. So that's what they were doing.

If Florida comes on board, now they have a hard decision because those are two really big. A lot of powerhouse schools in both places. And then after that, it's only a matter of town. Texas is probably going to follow suit. Oh, for sure.

And then the NCAA is going to be forced to make a very big choice, but they won't need... What are you going to? You're going to block out the big buyers or at the big schools? And they're doing it in such a way that the coaches don't have to feel threatened,

because they're not saying you're going to pay the students. What they're saying is they can make money off of their likeness. Right. And that's a really big deal. Oh, is that what it is? Mm-hmm. Okay, so the colleges aren't paying them. They're not going to pay them.

You know they make so much advertising money off them. It's ridiculous. Crazy. Crazy. So this is nuts, right? As an athlete, well, we're going to use football. So when I say this, anyone listening. Right.

I'm talking about NCAA football. I don't know how it works for anyone else, but I know that football brings in the most money, so this is the most football and basketball, most relevant. If you're a big time player, you're not allowed to work, and you're not allowed to take money.

Right. So how are you supposed to get money? Where the school is supposed to cover you, okay? And that's kind of cool, but look at how much money to schools make off of a player that gets big time. Oh, it's insane. Even a player gets small time.

I spoke at the University of South Carolina, this year. And one of the things they were telling me, guys just took a tour to the school. I spoke to the football team and took a tour to the facilities and everything. He was saying like, these guys are like rock stars because of the internet. Guys have three posts and 50,000 followers. Yeah. Because everyone just goes, because they just go and look at the website and see the roster and load them up. And then, but we're all saying the other big issue is everything comes with a price, right? The other big issue is that these guys, they can't because they're their teenagers.

They don't have the discipline to be like, I'm going to ignore those comments. It's already hard enough for adults. Oh, yeah. Oh, some guys in the NBA still can't even hold back on it. Right. And so you expect an 18, 19 year old kid with all this attention to ignore that. But yeah, so that's the big deal now.

And that's what annoys me about football fans in general. They'll always complain. Like I'm mainly the old white guys. They'd be like, oh, these fucking guys can't keep their mouth shut. They just fucking spat. These guys are millionaires, but they're idiots. like, dude, this guy's 20 years old. And people forget that.

Right. Because we correlate a lot of a thing with time and experience. Right. And they have the experience. Right. Absolutely. And they have the time invested in such a small amount of space. Yeah.

I mean, most people are never going to get to the point in their career where they're capable of earning seven figures. Right. And a single calendar year. Yeah. If you can do that as an athlete. Yeah, of course people are people going to look and they're going to know, well, why can't you stop smoking weed? Right.

Right. Yeah. That was a big deal with the Steelers, right? They called him in the city. Laby on Bell and at the airport. Stay off the weed. Stephen A. And so it's funny on the one end.

You're like, okay, dude, clearly you're an an anhole. You can't stop smoking weed on the other hand. You got to remember you're talking to a 22 year old. He just happens to be famous and. Right. You know, no one gives, think of it this way, think about rock stars. Same thing. Oh, yeah.

The difference is they're rock stars. Right. They're allowed, they're allowed to do cocaine and smoke weed and smoke crack, whatever they want to do. When I was, when I was at the height of my training, and I said in the next life, I'm going to be a rock star. I'm not going to be. I'm going to be Rick James. I'm right. I'm not going to be an athlete because being an athlete is like, being an athlete is like Adam and Eve and Apple.

You get this nice garden, you get all this stuff, and there's that apple. And that apple is drinking. Yeah. Every stand out all night partying with fans. Yep. People who want to buy you stuff. Girls who don't even care if you learn their name. Yeah.

And God, the person who gives you your athletic ability and all this talent. He goes, you can have anything in the garden. Just don't eat the apple. That's all you got to do. And you can stay. And what do you do? What's the first thing? You want that apple.

Oh, my God. There's carrots. There's pears. You could kill the animals if you figure out fire. And you eat that apple. You know, he's like, hey, man, that's it. You got to go. So it's I'm really looking forward to how that changes the athletic landscape.

Oh, for sure. Because at the end of the day, and here's the other thing, too, when people argue back and they go, well, we're giving them scholarships. We're giving them scholarships. Of course, that's great. And I'm like, have you been to a, have you seen what these guys majoring? Yeah, right. They're not.

Yeah, no. I'm like to laugh. I don't know why they don't. They're not taking the education seriously. Not right. Not only are they not majoring or anything useful, what they are studying, they're not taking it seriously. And on top of that,

the school is more interested in the money. Exactly. So what are they going to do? They're not going to flunk them out class. Right. When's the last time you heard of somebody? Never. Getting on academic probation.

And he didn't play on Sunday or something. That doesn't happen. Now, if you can't do anything, you're just taking them, you're just taking them. Yeah, yeah. that's how it is man

The other thing is like when I was that age I can't remember how much of a dumbass I was When I was that young Like in my late teens, early 20s And then imagine just having that massive microscope on you Of millions of people watching you every moment Scoping in on everything you post on social media All the comments

And then on top of that Give some young, you know, ignorant, cocky kid Millions of dollars That's gonna fuck them up even worse mentally You know what I mean It's going to ruin them. Yeah. Check this out.

I learned, I'm, I would like to think at this point of my life, I am, I'm above average at managing money. And I say above average because now my money does not just, I'm way past blowing it. But it doesn't just sit in my bank account either. I like put it in a place where it can do a thing for me, right? Right. I'm not like, I'm investing in stocks. Yeah.

But I try to use my money and let it go. What do you do? You got real estate? No. So I guess technically, I have ACORN, right? Acorn takes 25 out of my account and puts it someplace. And I checked it. They've been doing it for a year.

I was like, wow, I think I made like 40 bucks off it is. It's not a lot. Yeah. But it beat inflation. Yeah. So it was kind of cool, right? That is cool. So I'm above average.

Hell yeah. When I was 18, my dad died. When he died, his life insurance gave me $55,000. I didn't even And it gave me Now my mom the whole for me It gave me because I was an adult at 18 In 18 months

I was overdrawing the account And sleep on my eyes floor And dude When I look at like what did I have to show for it It's not like I had up I mean I bought myself a chain And some stupid clothes A lot of fast food

I didn't even drink that I mean I mean I Because I was in college I was drinking other people's alcohol I was buying fast food, man, the Chinese food place. They knew me by first name, dominoes, all that good stuff. I had no concept of like what made sense to buy and what did not make sense to buy and where to put money. And so that's me from the type of environment that a lot of these guys are from.

And I got all I got all relative to like an NFL contract was 55K. And I couldn't even hold on to it for 12, for 18 months. I mean, that's what I have. God, damn. Look, it's funny in retrospect. What a lesson. That was an expensive lesson in money management. Damn.

In retrospect, hilarious. Like, oh, man, look at 18-year-old me. I can't figure it out. Meanwhile, I remember when I was 19, I was living on my aunt's floor, sleeping on it because she already had a bunch of people living with her. I wasn't going to back home. at all, not because of shame or anything. Whose floor did you say you were living with?

My aunts. Your aunt, okay. My aunt's, you weren't getting along with your mom or what? Oh, no, no. We weren't, I mean, that's another story in itself while we weren't getting along. We can touch on that too

because that's probably some very powerful lessons about forgiveness in there. Yeah. But when I'm doing that, and I need to eat during a date, during the evening, I would just go over this girl's house. I was dating.

I mastered the art of being a hobo-sexual. That's what he is He's a homosexual You get your girlfriend Or your girlfriend's parents to feed you You can be all right if you get rid of that game But I imagine But during the day I had to eat something

I had a list of CVS's And right age I would go in And I figured out how to slides And pringles That's what I used to take I used to steal Pringles And some I think it was like

Fago Pop Right And I would put that in my in my pocket and that's what I would eat during that day. Damn. And I was really good. I knew the camera angles,

everything, man. And, you know, you got to survive. Look, it was either that or not eat. Right. Now,

now that I'm like, what's funny, now I'm real big into intermittent fasting. You could just fasted the whole time. I could have just fasted before, you know, I remember one day my friend of my, I was like,

yo, is that at home? Because I, because I was like, wearing the same thing today. Yeah. days and the facial hair I had at 19 was probably I looked rough but lessons you learn yeah hard lessons fun lessons I think I will never do again not only why I never do it again

but I'll never have a relationship with my children you know when I have them where they don't think they can come home and they don't feel comfortable because that's just a rough time my mom you know I wrote about this to my email list I just told my story and she was like I don't know why you wouldn't come home and I'm like yes you do and and it's crazy I had I had a lot of issues with my mom some of them was just you know my my personality and what happened but and how it happened you clash with another personality but a lot of it is a so my mom was not mature at all emotionally mentally I think physically she was an adult had me so by definition Right.

Mature there. But I'll never forget when I was 11. The 11 years old is when I realized I was going to have to take care of myself. Because she gets drunk and gets into a fight with this woman in the street. And I remember standing between her and the door saying, don't go outside. Like, just stay in here. She doesn't listen and goes and gets arrested. And we have to do with that.

And at that point, I was like, should have getting arrested. Yeah. She beat the lady's ass or what? Oh, yeah. And then in retaliation, we woke up to all this garbage dumped on our porch. It was ridiculous. And then we had to do it to kid. And then we had to do with her kids, you know, trying to fight us.

It was stupid, man. But like, I remember going, this is the, I was, even on 11, I had enough wherewithal to understand what the dynamic between a parent and the child should be. And I said, you and your lack of discipline, you abandon us. And that's what I felt. And then that was the tipping. not the tipping point but that was really a start of it i didn't realize how badly uh how poorly behind how far behind i was until i got to high school and i had the really fortune i got the

fortune of just we we live in something called a magnet system i don't know if they have something like that here but if you apply and you meet the criteria you can go to any high school that is not your region's high school that will feed you in within the city and i had enough sense to know i cannot continue to to go to school in this area because I'll either end up becoming a kingpin or a killer but no situation is going to turn

out well for me if I continue going here. So I got to go to this other school and for the first time it was the first time I'd ever been in a home where like a husband and wife lived and raised kids and they had a house and it was out of the projects. I mean I was like

I was floored and what happened is that over time watching how my mom continued to behave and the options that I was given or I felt like I didn't get and it's true I didn't get a lot of options and not nothing I mean literally nothing yeah I think about that I was exposed to me we always had like food for the most part right but yeah but never the ability to explore anything besides you know go to school come back go to school come back I was like this is messed up and I just got angrier anger and and then I thought about a lot of other stuff too And where I felt like the ball was dropped, you know, some people that we were, we were around growing up. Like one of the articles I was talking about, like, being raised by crackheads that really, well, you know, she wasn't a crackhead, but we were babysat by crackheads and around them and everything. Yeah, you mentioned to me that you knew it. Crack smoke smelled like and you were like sick of it or something.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you, you see these things. And you don't think anything of them until you see how it could and should be. Right. That's when I was there, I was just like, okay, everybody's messed up. Whatever, right? Everyone, you have to fight all the time, right? And I felt like, and then I had a friend, or I got to see, like, when his mom did, you know, getting out and working hard.

And it just, it made me so angry one day to think about a lot of the abuse that ended up suffering and dealing with. And so I said that there's no way I'm going to go back. I'm not going to get along there. We have a very different way of seeing things. I have a very big, I'm really good about dealing with the future, or at least better and continue to try and get better. And she is in it very much instant gratification, very much, very emotional. So I left and I spent time being very angry.

And then one day I figured out. And it was affecting how I would deal with her when I saw her. So you went like on your own, you moved away. Oh, yeah. You know, since I was 18, I moved home one time. And I, because I needed to go home. And I just, I had it. It was a rock bottom point that we talked about.

Yeah. And it only lasted four months because right around month three, or maybe one or two, I was like, this is a problem. I will suffer out there. I want to suffer no matter what, basically, is what I thought. I said, well, let's suffer in a way to hopefully build some character and doesn't have me think about doing something crazy. But I got tired of being angry.

That's how to be angry. and it wasn't consistent with the way my philosophy about the world was developing, which is very much responsibility for how you feel and your environment and how you think about things. So I was like, I started to dive into forgiveness and forgiveness.

And now it is very much, if you want to talk about like my spiritual system, it's all based on forgiveness. The book, of course, and miracles, when people ask me like, oh, what books should I read? What's your book recommend? I have three books.

The Tao of Jekundo by Bruce Lee for your body, the art of learning for your mind, and a course and miracles for your heart. Course and miracles? A course and miracles. And it may, I mean, the whole premise, I won't get into the whole premise, it's kind of kooky.

But the basic idea is that forgiveness is the only way you can ever be at peace. Right. And you, but forgiveness is an act. It's not a thing. You're just, well, I'm going to be forgiven. Nope, no, you have to work at it. And there's a way to work at it.

And it really much, very much influenced how I was able to work through a lot of problems, how, like, now when I look back at some of my behavior, when I was drinking, how that affect the things. Because when you stop drinking and you look back at yourself when you're sober, you go, holy hell. That guy was a problem. And you feel bad. You feel bad about the way you talk, the way you treated, some of the things you did, the risk you took, The lives you put in danger, the people you annoy, the friendships restrained, all of that. You feel bad about all of it.

And I don't have those moments that much anymore, but when I first stopped drinking, I would have a lot of them. Okay. But I dealt with them by forgiveness. I had to learn to forgive myself. I always say you got to forgive three things to be at peace. You got to forgive yourself. You got to forgive the world. You got to forgive the people who wrong you.

It's easy to complain that the world is one. way you know i understand what you say about people the wronged you but what do you mean about forgiving yourself like what do you what do you mean by that okay so so we think i think a lot of times we feel guilty this this is my idea about guilt and i may or may not have got this from the book like guilty right like i didn't go to the gym today i feel guilty about that or i i went out and got fucked up last night right now now i think that's a general state of disappointment but when i when i talk about guilt i think we feel guilty about a thing that we We've done something and we think we got away with it.

We think we got the benefit without paying the cost. Got it. Right? It's why, you know, they talk about like people who turn themselves in for crimes. They do it because I really think there's a part of the population and probably a significant part. It might be part of being human that we don't do well when, well, we know that equality is kind of an illusion. And we know that there's, but we do know that. that fairness is not.

I think intuitively and internally, we know that for X, there should be some kind of minus X-ish. Yeah. Response. And if you get the X, you feel guilty. If you,

right, you want to talk about even at the, I don't think you feel guilty so much for missing the gym as you do for not having your physique immediately go to shit, right? Right. Like, whenever you miss the gym and you, immediately got, you know, you put on 10 pounds and your cuts are hanging out. You're going to feel, you know, like, okay, that's what was supposed to happen. Yeah.

Right. But if you, if that doesn't, then you feel bad. And then it keeps going and you're like, oh, man, why I know? And then eventually you either start going to the gym or you accept the new state of things. Right. Because your mind can't reconcile. Now, on the flip side, you would know something's really wrong. If you were pounding it out every day in the gym, but nothing was having.

happening. There was no muslim. And that's another issue, right? Right. But the whole guilt thing comes when we think we've done something wrong and we have not, or we think we got some benefit without putting in the work together. Without put it in the work. Or we acquired it in a moral way. And I don't like the word of moral, something more quantitative. We acquired it in a way where the other people didn't know that they had to pay for. Right. Okay. Which is why lying makes us feel guilty. got away but we didn't have to deal with the conflict but now the other person kind of has to bear the weight of the beer somebody else suffer right they have to pay and so you forgive yourself like for me world is a perfect example uh in my life i think about all the times i drove drunk

no one died sure but the risk was there and i'm a really big person about risk maybe if i was had a more deterministic mindset and i didn't think about the probabilities maybe it'd bother me but I'm very aware of the probability. I talk about it all the time. I mean, I stop drinking before the law of large numbers caught up with me, which is the whole idea, the more you commit, the more times you flip a coin, right? Yeah.

The more, the closer it should get to one half, which is what we expect. You know, half the time has its tail. But if you flip it 10 times, it could be, like, you could realistically get 10 heads in a row, right? But the larger, the number of trials gets, the closer you trend to what the expected average should be. Right.

Like blackjack. Right. That's why the casino always wins. Yeah. That's right. The house always wins. That's true. That's true.

If I think about this and I go, I beat the law of large numbers, right? That, or I stopped playing before the law of large numbers beats me is a better way to look at it. And that makes them feel guilty because there are, I know there, there are some people. I talk to some guys. They got four DUIs. I'm like, I know. How you get four, man? Should, I've been pulled over four times and got out of it.

And you got a four? How'd that happen? Right? And I drink 10 times more than you do. Exactly. All it is is the coin land in some way. And when you look at it that way, you can feel bad. You know?

Or are you, you steal something? And no one realizes everyone's pointing to blame or somebody else doesn't and they take the cost and wherever it. It's going to make you feel guilty. So how do you forgive yourself or something like that? I think the first thing you have to do, is one it's going to be

maybe not what you expect it first thing you got to do is realize that it's in the past I think we hold grudges and we have difficulty forgiving when we think well because we think

that our emotions are going to somehow change if we get angry enough or sad enough the causality will be reversed and we can go and make it right

yeah doesn't happen right That's why we think if we, so we think revenge is going to balance the scale. Right. But, but then you can get your revenge. You go, huh, well, that didn't undo it. And I still feel like shit. And on top of that, I feel even worse. Not that I did something to somebody and affected a bunch of other lives who had nothing to do with it.

That's how it goes up, right? So the first step, though, is to just understand it's in the past. And there's nothing you can do about it. At the same time, you're just, the only that you had something to do with it. And the third way is to remember. And this is the hardest thing for most people. This is the hard step that a lot of people.

They follow me on the first one. They follow me in the second one. The third one is where they go. I'm not sure, man. You sound like you're going to crack. The third step is you have to remember that no matter what. You did the thing and the other person did the thing or to you or you did the thing because you were chasing what you believed was the best way to get,

feeling you thought it was the best way to feel fun. The other person thought it was the best way to alleviate something and that's how you can be forgiven. That's how you can forgive someone else. Because look, if someone the worst thing that happened, it's been a long time someone did something, there's something foul to me. Let's say like my girlfriend cheated on me or something. Okay. The first response is to be angry. It's the whole of grudge.

I want to do something bad, but I have to forgive it. And remember, forgiveness, I always have to say this. Forgiveness doesn't substitute justice. I still got to break up with her, right? Yeah. If someone kills my family, look, man, they still got to go to jail. Forgiveness is to keep me from dealing with that emotional burden and perhaps doing something destructive to myself because I think I can fix it, right?

That's what forgiveness is. So with that caveat out the way, I have to look at that, going back to the girlfriend, cheating example, or even a family killing example. Somebody killing a family member of yours. That's a relevant thing in the media today. That just happened. But they did it because they thought that it was going to bring them closer to peace for one way or the other. And in doing so, their actions are no different than my actions.

And so I can take that and emotionally wrap my mind around it. That does not excuse the action. That does not mean I'm going to be cool with them. That doesn't mean any of that. You forgive a person so you don't carry. that emotional burden yourself. So you don't have to suffer. Right.

That's it. Perfect. Right? Because that's the idea. No one suffers but you when you hold a grudge. Right? What is that all saying? It's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die or something like that.

That is so spot on. And if you get that, then you can easily forgive. Like that's the hard part. That is the hardest step for many people. Yeah. That's strong, man. That's really strong. I think that's important for a lot of people to understand,

be able to understand that to experience. You've got to experience things like that where people really fuck you over or you fuck somebody else over. You know what I mean? Where two people can come together and forgive each other or, you know, like I said.

And I think, like, you know, what you said is another part, I think, of development. It'd be nice. I think we all would like to fashion ourselves as the hero in our story. We go through, life and the whole time only we are the only people who suffer wrong we never do any wrong it's not true and owning that I think brings you a lot of peace because it forces you to take a

process that you normally extend to other people other things forgiveness and it forces you to apply it to yourself I talked to a friend of mine that had dealt with some trauma a female this is important for the story. That was some trauma. And she had trouble. She could forgive her attacker. She had trouble, so much trouble, forgiving herself. She thought, okay, if I hadn't said this or did this or been in that position,

this would not have happened. If I had been stronger, if I had resisted, this would not have happened. And in her mind, she can wrap herself around the idea that a person is evil and victimized and she can forgive that. Your own hangups will determine what you can or cannot forgive where you have trouble. Because she can't wrap her mind around the idea that she made a mistake. She just made an error in judgment. She missed the bad guy. It happens.

People have a hard time forgiving themselves. I think they have a way harder time forgiving themselves than they do other people. I really believe that a person can forgive the killer. Let's say someone killed the kid. Yeah. Right. This is an extreme. But I think that people would have a harder time forgiving themselves for allowing it to happen.

I don't even like using a verbal law, but I think that's the best word I have to describe that kind of action, right, for letting it happen, a lot of them to happen, than they would for somebody taking advantage and being an exactness of such a cool, cool action on them. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine something that extreme, someone killing someone really close to you and feeling that hatred towards

that person non-stop every day. I mean, it's just exhausting. It demolishes you. It would, yeah. And, but it's also extremely hard to get over that.

wall to be able just to let go. Yeah. And I never say it should be easy. But sometimes people don't think about it that way. They think they just do whatever is instant gratification. Not only that, but they can't see a reason. You know, people, you have to take your inner peace and your wellness so seriously. Yeah, for sure.

And that's just what it comes down to is if you, if you. If you follow it logically, you end up in the same place as you would if you follow it emotionally or rationally. I guess if you follow it rationally, you end up in the same place. You will if you follow it emotionally, which is the other person does not experience what you continue to beat yourself up for. So you have to do something about that. And the premise that I follow is what you do about that is forgiveness. And forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. Justice still has to be dumb.

We believe in that. I'm the God that's going to be swinging the axe and taking your head off telling you, look, man, it's okay. I really don't feel anything. Hey, my mind, why you cut my head off? No, no, no, that's not for you. Right. I don't feel anything.

I just want to know. I forgive you. You're forgiven. Yeah. But you're still dead. But you still got to go, man. That kind of thing. People don't get that.

And that's hard for people to reconcile, too, is that you can exact the punishment. You can protect yourself, but you can still forgive. I like that. I really like that. And I think it's a very, very strong and deliberate way to live. Maybe that's why people resist it because it's very deliberate. Yeah, for sure. Well, cool, man.

I read on your Twitter that you have, you have some links to your, to some books that you've written on your Twitter, or is, are they on your website? Yeah, website and Twitter. Okay.

Yeah. And you got like, you got like 100,000 something followers on Twitter, dude, you're blowing up, man. Yeah, people,

people keep fond of me. I wonder if they're following me now because of like, because they see so many other people. Yeah, yeah, right? Is that,

oh, is that what happens when you get so many that snowballs like that, people just like, it's not so much that it's nobles. I think it grows exponentially. I was going to say models after E, but like,

not nerdy me um yeah but in other words you know each one follower can get two people to follow and each other you can get two circles one two four you got some big followers though yeah that that that too uh knows you have rick reuben following you yeah you know someone messaged me was like yo did you know rich rubin follows you and i said no let me look up who that because i come me i'm not you didn't even know who he was no oh man but once i found out i took a reach out of it and put it on my my Facebook. That's wild. They were like, that's crazy.

That's really cool. All the members of the Peterson follow family. Yeah. Donald Trump Jr., Scott Adams. Donald Trump Jr. follows you? Yeah. Holy shit.

Wow. It says, you know, it's a, I have, now, I wish I could tell people, I know exactly why these people like me. I got no idea, right? Yeah. Because I'm not transmitting what I think is a better than winning personality via these tweets. But what I am.

putting out is, you know, my experience and my, I think I'm authentic. I certainly, I definitely, not, not false. So these people when they follow me, I just go, cool, man. Like, like a lot of times, I wish there was a way to see how many, like, people with a blue checkmark following me. Because they were not in there, because here's what Twitter does. Whenever, whenever someone with a blue checkmark or a how follower account follows you or interacts with you, forget follow, interacts with you whether they like your tweet or retweet it you get forced notified yeah all right and so i'll get a notification i'm like who is this part and then i look like wow that's cool man

it's crazy all these people follow me yeah oh what's his name uh david iia follows me and if you don't know who that is right look man you're not supposed to know all this you are right right he's the guy who wrote directed training day oh really yeah the awesome guy um and he's a He actually, he bought my, he messed me a few times. One when he bought my book about sobriety because he talked about, I guess he had the same issues. Okay. I bought it and in Brezny.

And he also goes, oh, man, I wonder about like, you have the same birthday. I was like, okay. No shit. So he wished me happy birthday and my birthday. I was like, oh, man, cool. Thanks. That's awesome. That's crazy, man.

So, yeah, you know, we live in this world where if you have, I think, a valuable thing to say and a valuable message people can relate to. Yeah. And now I think a lot of it too is I think I'm a great communicator, right? Yeah. You know, I try and you better than average average moderate. No, I think I'm a great communicator and a great writer. And I think that really helps what a lot of people connect and follow me and retweet my stuff and find me. And then I'm able to like take that and put in other platforms and get on my list and my website and all that.

But the whole idea, the whole point of me bringing that up is I think that if you have something to say and you'll work on how you say it. We live in a great world where you can share that and connect other like-minded people. I'm only in Florida because of the Twitter connections I made, right? Right. So, and right, so those are the two parts. And the other third part is what I was saying at the beginning. If you live life, if you have something valuable to say and give an experience,

and it ain't got to be something crazy, you know? People, here's a blow your mind, right? We talked about the boxing and to many people, that would be that thing. Yeah. It's you famous. Right, right, right. But let me tell you something. When I lost my fight and effectively disappeared from that level of notoriety,

I only had 7,000 followers. Wow. At the peak of your boxing? Wow. This has all been done since then via my writing, via what I say, am I speaking and everything I do. And so that lets me know, right? You know what I'm talking about some real time feedback?

What should you do with your life? That lets me know that I have something unique. talk or people see something unique and it makes and I would be I would be foolish to not take advantage of it but this is the decision I made my final year

of school and I'm by final I'm 30 or 33 I said you know I don't have the personality to work in a lot or rather it was more I don't have the personality to be behind the scenes very much you know MBTI

whether you think it's trash or not my MBTI's ENTJ and I fit that to a T, both positive and negative. Your what? E&TJ, extroverted, intuitive. Oh, man, I can't even remember. Oh, okay. But, yeah, some people know what it is and people won't, right? But very much extroverted, very much interested in interacting with people.

And so all of the jobs I saw that my career path was taking me now, they were not that. And so I was like, all right, whatever, not interested. And then that explains why I love the teaching. I get to talk and communicate with people. I mean, I really love tutoring. I continued it longer than I had to. Like, it started as a thing I needed to do for money. And it ended with me going, well, I really like this.

But at this point, it costs more of my money and time to go than it's worth. Like it very much was a side thing that I was having fun with doing. And I find these, this. This communication. I get so much out of it. There's something about sitting here. Connecting with people and connecting. And then however my brain works,

I think I'm very good at explaining things. And all these things really come together. And I say half joking, 40% joking. Half 40%. The Twitter was really made for people like me. That I can sit and write. And then on top of it,

I can start a blog. And I know it's funny. I've gone back off of my writing. And I see how I've gotten better. and better and better and progressively. Yeah. Better able to express the same idea with fewer words. My word economy is improved.

My word choice is improved. And I continue to sharpen it up because that's what I love to do. People are like, man, why don't you start a YouTube channel? I'm like, yeah, but then I got to do a YouTube channel. Like, not interested. I want to write. I want to write. Yeah.

And they communicate with that method, you know. That's cool. Have a good time. Yeah, there's a lot. People are different in the way they like to communicate on social media. I'm like, like, Instagram and Twitter are so different. Yeah. Like there's some people who just like love posting pictures and being vague about things.

And there's people who like just all day fucking tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet talking about things like what they feel, what they like a cool quote they saw. Right. I think it's interesting to be able to do both. I mean, you got to be able to because like if you're a visual thinker or a visual communicator versus. And it's a great challenge because now the next thing I'm like, okay, I'm doing well on Twitter. Yeah. Let me try Instagram out. Right.

Pretty much I'm trying to avoid a thing that is going to. require a huge investment of my time like putting together a channel. So let me do Instagram. And I'm having a lot of fun with that. I passed 10K so now I can send people back to my website. Oh, nice. Via my stories. But I haven't a lot of fun with that.

But what it's taught me is that words, do one thing, pictures, do another thing. And if you want to, if you can, the more things you can do, the more options. have. And if you are, and I can really figure I can learn the whole, because look, the whole hashtag system figured it out. Well, I didn't figure it out. But like, realize it's nothing more than an SEO. Yeah.

The SEO, I just applaud to a thing. You know, the more followers you have, the more hashtags you can rank, or rather, hashtags have a certain number of posts attached to them. And the more followers you have, the more likely you are to rank if you put something in that hashtag and each post has a finite amount of like outlink energy based on outlink energy that's uh i guess outlink points you know like you can only put so many links on a website before each individual link loses its ability to uh be a follow link and get you SEO point same idea with iG right so really understanding this right it becomes more deliberate

i'm not just hashtaging for oh i think this is cool hashtag you know goals hashtag this. Right. Some people have a hundred thousand hashtags on their posts. Right. So it goes, oh no, let's pick something a little smaller where I can get on front page of that based on the things that people are following and it turns into a really fun game. These games

of connection are really interesting to me. Do you, for Instagram, do you screenshot your tweets and post them on Instagram? I used to. That's a hack, dude. That works good. For me at least. Really? Yeah. Maybe I should get back to it. Yeah, you got to do that. The hash, the screenshots from Twitter to Instagram. That's

You know what I've been doing? I've been sending them to my stories. But I think I'll probably get some more out of it. Oh, yeah. Because on the one end, you talk to these pros who run these agencies. Well, I'm learning when someone says they were in an agency. Yeah. Look, well, here's the biggest sign for me.

If you tell me you run an agency in your Twitter account as small as a lot, then I can't, like, I can't listen to you. Like, I do a lot of stuff helping people go to Twitter. And I can do it. because there's just not going to be many people who have more followers than me, right? Even if I was full of shit, which I'm not.

But even if I was, they're going to look at my father account and the ratio as well. I was like, okay. We have to at least listen to this guy, right? Yeah. They can't just write me out, but I get guys writing me to go,

you know, here's a thing, you know, and we do this and we do that, and we have this accounts and I look and I go, yeah, man, but you got like nine hundred followers, bro. Like, what about me? Well, how are you going to help me get to where I'm trying to go? Now, I'm working with one group now.

And the people who reached out to me are okay. I see you've done the thing that you say that you can do for me. So I see that you walk the walk. You walk the walk. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm in. You know, so we'll see how it goes. Hell yeah, man.

Well, cool. I think we're about to hit your time limit here. We're about an hour and a half in. Awesome, man. This is fun. Yeah. Where can people find your stuff? Where can they watch your videos?

Read your books. Oh, my videos. That's all of it. But I read my books. You know, just put my name Ed Lattimore and on Amazon and you'll see them. It was really smart about it. Or rather, I'm really fortunate that I have the name Ed Lattimore and no one beat me to it.

I feel bad for the guy who comes up next who wants to use Ed Lattimore because my website is Ed Lattimore.com. Nice. My Instagram is Ed Lattimore. My Twitter is Ed Lattimore. No problem. Facebook pages at Lattimore. And very simple, too, right?

The only trouble is that, like, the way Lattimore is pronounced. Whereas I would spell, some people put two T's in there. Nope, I'm one T. Ed Lattimore. And at Lattimore.com. At Lattimore.com. Ed Lattimore. Instagram, Ed Lattimore on Twitter.

Hell yeah, man. Cool, man. Well, thank you so much for coming out here and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your stories. It's been fun. I really appreciate this, man. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Yes, sir.