Digital Social Hour - How This Man Turned a Ghost Town into a Social Media Sensation! | Brent Underwood DSH #607

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Ever heard of a ghost town turned into a social media sensation? 😱 Join Sean Kelly on the Digital Social Hour as he dives into the incredible journey of Brent Underwood! In this gripping episode, discover how Brent took Cerro Gordo, an abandoned mining town from the 1800s, and brought it back to life, making it a viral hit on YouTube and beyond. 🌟   Brent reveals the challenges, eerie ghost stories, and the secrets behind transforming a forgotten town into a thriving tourist destination. From digging up crystals to building a hotel, this episode is packed with valuable insights into entrepreneurship, history, and social media magic! ✨   Tune in now and don't miss out on this captivating story! Hit that subscribe button 📺 and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and be part of the adventure.   Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets! 🎥 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #BrentUnderwood #GhostTownLiving #SocialMediaSensation #Entrepreneurship #HistoricRevival   #ExploringAbandonedTowns #CaliforniaMiningTown #GhostTownRevival #GhostTown #ExploringOldMines   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:40 - Brent Underwood 05:00 - Haunted Towns 12:33 - Pivot to Audio 14:05 - Media Training 15:18 - Politicians 18:30 - Career Before Books 20:30 - Career Before Books 21:45 - Career Before Books 23:20 - Graham's Generosity 24:35 - Book Sources for Graham 25:10 - Life-Changing Books 27:22 - Graham’s Meditation Practice 29:03 - Podcasts Recommendations 29:58 - Graham's Promotions 30:10 - Conclusion   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Brent Underwood https://www.instagram.com/brentwunderwood https://www.youtube.com/@GhostTownLiving   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Come on. What do you say? Do you think it's the wildest show on the internet? So I'm taking media training classes right now, actually, to find out their mindset and how I can penetrate. Answer what they want to answer. Meaning like if you ask a question, they might not even answer that exact question. They'll dance around it and answer whatever their talking point is. And so it's like, you didn't answer that at all.

But yeah. 100%. They're good at that. As a listener, unless you're trying to perceive it, you don't pick it up. You're just like, like, you didn't answer that at all. But yeah. 100%. They're good at that. As a listener, unless you're trying to perceive it, you don't pick it up. You're just like, oh, I'm just listening to a story. You're like,

well, he's not answering the question at all. Exactly. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys, we got Brent Underwood undergoing quite the mission right now. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Yeah. Please enlighten everyone what you're up to. Yeah. So I live in an old mining town in the 1800s. It's called Cerro Gordo. And it was a big silver mine back in the day. It was the biggest silver mine in California. And I've

been living up there for the past four years straight, just kind of trying to bring it back to life. Eventually one day we can host people overnight and stuff like that, but right now it's just fixing it up, documenting the time that I'm up there on YouTube and other places. And yeah, just trying to bring a dead town back to life. So when did it become abandoned? About 1940.

So the heyday was like 1860s. So 1865, they started mining silver there. And they mined that for about 20 years. And they pulled about $500 million worth of minerals. Holy crap. If you adjust it for inflation, that's today's money. But still, this town was a boom town. There was 4,000 residents there, dozens of buildings.

And so they mined silver to about 1890. They lost the vein. The guy came back in 1910, found zinc. So he started mining zinc there to about 1930. So for like a mining town and an active life of almost like 60 years, which is crazy. Usually these mining camps, they thought, you know, six or eight years,

they'd get the money and get out. This had like a really long life. And then how the story goes is, I guess, a company tried to kind of take it back over again. They were leasing it. They had a caretaker in place. They couldn't pay him. And so instead of paying him his back wages, they just gave him the town.

Here's the town. Good luck. But it's interesting, though, because at that point in time, it wasn't historic in any means. Imagine getting a four-year-old mining town. It's like, what am I really going to do with this? And so he sold some of the materials off and stuff like that. Oh, there were still some materials left to sell? More like the buildings

themselves. He was selling off scrap stuff. Yeah, scrap metal. And then 2018, I bought it. And then I moved up there in 2020 full-time during the pandemic. I was looking for places to go. I figured, what a good place to socially distance. And here we are.

So you're the only one that lives there? Not these days. Originally, that was the case. Originally, there was only myself. But these days, we have a full-time town manager, as I call him, that kind of looks after the town. And then we have a lot of volunteers that help. I started documenting a lot of it on YouTube.

That's cool. Created a lot of attention, a lot of volunteers coming up, a lot of different stuff like that. So these days, almost never alone. That's cool. Do you think there's anything left to be mined there? It's pretty much done. Last month, I pulled out a little bit. I made some rings and coins,

but I don't think any on a commercial scale. The primary middle there is lead and silver to combine. The process of extracting the silver from the lead is pretty difficult. It costs a lot. The cost is more than it's worth. If you can make a small batch, if you can make, let's say, 10 ounces of silver

and then make pendants out of it or something, that might be worthwhile. That's cool. I've always wanted to go crystal hunting. There's a lot of crystals there. Are there? We have crystals. We have natural turquoise.

Dude, I got to stop. Where is this? We're about three and a half hours from here. Bro, sign me up because crystal hunting has been on my list for a minute. There's 30 miles of mines underneath the town. Oh, the main shaft goes nine feet down and they're just branches and 30 miles down there too so you found some cool crystals there found a lot of crystals found the silver found like turquoise because i think and now i have like a little lapidary shop where you can you know just polish some stuff up yeah

imagine like i can go mine my own silver get my own gems like make my own rings all from like stuff on the property. That is awesome. Yeah, it's fun. So you're going to turn it into like a tourist thing? Eventually, yeah. We're hoping to have overnight guests. We're building a hotel right now. Nice.

It's going to have six rooms, a bar and a restaurant. And hopefully that comes online maybe later this year. Oh, nice. And then after that, who knows? You know, it's 400 acres. It's a lot of land. That's huge. In the middle of nowhere.

Holy crap. We're surrounded by nobody. And so hospitality is kind of the main hope. Yeah. And then long term, maybe, I mean,

who knows? It's like a, it's not a blank canvas, but it's a canvas to keep like kind of painting on for a long time. It's fun. You must be seeing some UFOs

and some weird shit out there. There's a lot of time. There's a lot of place. I mean, it was a dangerous town back in the day. You know, there is, there is, the newspaper said's a lot of time. There's a lot of place. I mean, it was a dangerous town back in the day. You know, there was,

there was, the newspaper said like a murder a week. Oh, it might be haunted. We should get some ghost experts over there. Yeah,

we have a cemetery there that has about 400 people in it. Wow. Yeah, we know ghost hunters guys out here. Zach Baggins went up there before. Oh,

he did? Yeah, he did a show about it. Oh, I didn't know that. Sam and Colby went up out here in Vegas too. Did they find anything interesting?

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Download NBA 2K Mobile now on the App Store and Google Play. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below and here's the episode guys. Thing, you know, I've never like had that like connection, I guess necessarily, but I'm interested. So you're sleeping in a haunted place, 150 year old house that might have some ghosts in it. I just found out my childhood home was haunted two weeks ago. How'd you find that out uh through a psychic i got a psychic up there he got

a good psychic yeah i got a good one for you she'll know within a day i'll dive her up yeah i'll introduce you guys i think that'll be a cool thing to film yeah yeah i don't know i'm a believer but yeah some people don't have that belief i'm open to it like i'm waiting for that experience to happen to me you know yeah um just not yet i guess yeah i'm open to it. I'm waiting for that experience to happen to me. Yeah. Just not yet, I guess. Yeah, I'm open to a weird experience, but nothing actually happened other than sleep paralysis, I guess. That's something. Did that happen to you ever?

Not yet. I mean, the closest I've gotten, I've heard different noises, but that was early on there. So either I'm just becoming more comfortable up there or we're finding our places to go have a beer or something like that. I love that. You got a dog out there too no dog yeah i have uh six goats uh three alpacas and some cats that's cool yeah it's cool yeah i have to have some life when i first moved

up there there's nothing like no heartbeat at all yeah um because the town's at in the mountains it's about 8 500 feet up and so there's no natural wildlife or anything like that and so i kind of brought some animals up there just to have a little bit of like a life up there yeah because it could get lonely that's like being in solitary yeah it was i mean it was easy during the pandemic because i felt like everybody was kind of socially distancing and by themselves a lot but like these days when i see my friends you know like going to dinner or something it's like oh yeah on social media yeah how long were you alone up there the whole pandemic not for the whole pandemic but a decent like it'd be like months at a time.

Then maybe a friend or two would come visit kind of thing. Yeah. So it'd be a long time. You were all alone for months? Yeah. It was a long time. I don't know how you stayed sane. Yeah.

I don't know either. Well, COVID, people were going crazy. Yeah. Well, I think that like during COVID, it was almost a blessing being up there because I had so much land to explore. You know, I wasn't cooped up in an apartment in New York or something. That's true. So like I could go out and do a 10-hour hike if I wanted to.

That was cool then. Yeah, 400 acres. You probably haven't even been to the whole place. There's trails. I try to walk through it, but there's just so many old mining camps. There's a bunch of mines and campsites and stuff. It's pretty cool. Wow.

This turned from a side project into your main thing now. It was the side project. I worked in digital marketing, uh digital marketing i did book marketing i worked with a lot of authors and then this was kind of i always had this love of hospitality and so i had a bed and breakfast in austin texas like an old victorian mansion kind of thing um but it's again side project but then pandemic hit moved up there and just kind of came the full gig. Wow. Yeah. Good. So you were an author. You were helping authors publish books before this?

Yeah. Not publish them necessarily, but more like market them, edit them, stuff like that. And so I worked with a lot of nonfiction authors primarily. Yeah. And so that was always kind of my day job and my passion. But I always loved hospitality history. And so this place was an idea to combine both of those in one. Yeah.

That's pretty awesome. I only read nonfiction. Yeah. I probably, I mean, I probably worked with a lot of authors that, you know, probably like we work with like Robert Green,

Ryan Holiday, his partner, you know, Tim Ferriss, all those types of classics. And so some of the OGs in the nonfiction space, those are some of the top selling authors of all time in the business space. And it's just like,

I felt very lucky to be able to like learn from them. And like now, I mean, next week I have a book coming out. And it's just like, I felt very lucky to be able to like learn from them. And like now, I mean next week I have a book coming out and so I feel like finally the tables have turned, you know? And so the same guys

that like I looked up to forever now like their blurbs are on the back of the book. Incredible. It's cool. It's very like. Who'd you get on the back? Robert's on there.

Robert Green's on there. Ryan Holiday's on there. Michael East, who wrote this book called The Comfort Crisis. It's pretty big right now. These are legends, bro. Congrats.

Thank you. What were some things you learned from Robert Greene? I think he has this concept of mastery. So his idea is basically like we're all on our journey to find our life's task. You know, what our purpose, if you want to call it that. And he basically says the best way to do that is think about kind of what excited you as a kid. You know, like what fired you up as a kid. And then think about since then, like what skills can you combine in a unique way that nobody else can and for me when i started thinking about that like growing up my grandfather

would watch gun smoke which is this western show just over and over and over again yeah so i had this like love the american west and then i went to school for finance so i have that finance background and then i had the hospitality thing and the marketing and so i started thinking like oh like an abandoned mine in California hits, you know, old West, it hits the real estate that I went to school for. It hits the storytelling aspect of working with authors, you know, cause I'm kind of storytelling around the town. Um, and so, yeah, it feels like I kind of like finally settled on that life's task that Robert talks about a lot. And that was like, I don't know, it was pretty good. It's good to find your,

your purpose. Cause it takes some people longer than others took me 26 years to find podcasting yeah yeah it's just like it's one of those things that i think sometimes people are always like waiting and waiting and waiting and i think that's part of it too but you also kind of like identically eventually you kind of almost decide right like for me i was there i was like oh this could be it and then i think that when you fully like commit to like that being your thing there's like this comfort in the commitment. Meaning like you're not worried about what the next project is, the next project, the next project. At least for me, like I was like, oh, okay.

Instead of thinking, you know, what am I going to do next? What am I going to do next? Like this town that I'm in, Cerro Gordo, is like the project probably for the foreseeable future. And I like, there's a lot of like comfort to me in that. Yeah, you feel comfortable, right? That's how I feel with this too. Exactly, yeah. It's hard to describe,

but yeah, cause I've done so many different businesses, so many different things and I've never felt so at peace. Yeah. Like I wake up now pumped. Yeah. Like you, you enjoy what you're doing,

you know, you get to interact with the type of people that you want to interact with, you know, and it just feels like this is where I'm supposed to be. Yeah. It feels like a lot's in your control. Rather my other businesses, there were so many things outside of my control and it wasn't comfortable.

Yeah. You know, with this, I get to choose who I talk to. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's a fun life, man. I know what Rogan does it now. Yeah, yeah. And that money ain't bad either. I believe it.

I believe it. 250 mil, sign me up. Oh my God. Same with Ferris though. His pot is huge. He'll probably sell that shit for like nine figures. It's big, yeah. I mean, he's just, he's a master too.

He's like in his own way. You know, he's just, he's a master too. He's like in his own way, you know, he's just such a meticulous researcher. We're just like laser focused and just the attention to detail is something that working with him, I don't know. It was another like lesson, just like kind of the frontline kind of thing.

There's another level to him. Yeah. Four hour work week though. I couldn't do it personally. Yeah. No, I just, I like work too much.

Me too. I love it. I think he was, I think he was more of kind of like argue a, a way of life more than necessarily a prescriptive number of hours and so i think that like if you find what you love i don't think that he's gonna be like no don't work more than four hours a week you know yeah because it's also subjective what is work actually right yeah so i feel like what i do i'm maybe you could relate like most of it doesn't feel like work necessarily it feels kind of like what i want to be doing. Yeah, it's stuff you do in your free time. Exactly.

Yeah, that makes sense. So are you raising money for this? Are you just going to self-fund it? Yeah, so far, when I went to buy it, I didn't have enough money. I kind of took a big loan against my property in Austin. And then I got a couple of friends to chip in as investors, but more as friends. And then I've been self-funding it since then. So the social media helps.

So I have a YouTube channel that chips in. I mean, kind of a drop in the bucket comparatively but yeah i still work my day job with authors so that's kind of the day job still in that kind of like i funnel money from that into the town but i hope that like once we open the hotel it stabilizes you know financially and then who knows i mean like over the years if i'm there for another 30 years we could do i mean why can't we just keep building buildings forever, you know? Yeah. Keep building this like really cool place that'll exist for maybe another century or two.

Empire, yeah. Yeah, it'd be fun. What are you seeing working in the book space right now? Because is there a pivot to audio, audible and stuff? Yeah, audible is huge. I mean, of course, I think that like that's big. As far as like things that people exposure, I guess, like podcasts, obviously, are huge. Just people are listening to more podcasts than ever, which, you know, a good time to be in the podcast game.

It's not that, like, you know, people used to think, like, legacy media used to sell a lot of stuff. Like, oh, I need to be in the New York Times or I need to be on the Today Show, which are still fine. But there's podcasts that will, like, dominate either of those. You know, we've had authors that are on the front page of the New York Times that are on the Today Show. And then they'll go on, like, Tim's podcast. And Tim will sell 10 times more books than either of those. You know, we've had authors that are on the front page of the New York Times that are on the Today Show and then they'll go on like Tim's podcast and Tim will sell 10 times more books

than either of those other ones will. I could see that because I bought a lot of their sponsors' products like Athletic Greens, Whoop. Yeah.

Because I think about it like in a Today Show spot, you're on for three minutes and then it's gone forever. A podcast, you're listening to a person for maybe an hour, right? And so you kind of

build that resonance that you don't build maybe on a quick hit TV spot. And so I just think you're in a good place with your podcast. I think so too, man. I think you're doing good. It's something with trust. The guest is talking for an hour rather than a TV spot. You don't even know who it is.

Yeah, you forget it. Or on the radio, you forget. I don't know. And with podcasts, it feels a little bit more personable, I think. It is because people are actually being themselves for the most part. Some of them put on a front, but when you're talking for an hour, you get a good sense of someone. Yeah, definitely. Some of these guys are hard to break though, man. They're stonewall. They're just like, you're trying to get through the character.

These celebs, because they're so media trained. So I'm taking media training classes right now actually to find out their mindset and how I can penetrate. What's the biggest trick of trying to crack through that you've learned so far? I mean, I only had one class so far, but they're basically trained to give the most bare answers. Okay. So they're trained to like not expose themselves. Right. So you just have to look at it from that point of view and get them to open up. So I try to relate to the guests before we start filming yeah and i'll figure out what that

angle is it's different for every guest whether it's like if we grew up in the same town or we like the same food or the same band right i'll throw in that sentence oh i saw you were friends with this guy so am i yeah build that trust a little bit drop the guard because you got to drop the guard with these celebs man or else they're not going to do shit yeah i believe and i think a lot of times when I listen to sometimes, if it's a real famous celeb, they'll answer what they want to answer. Meaning if you ask a question,

they might not even answer that exact question. They'll dance around it and answer whatever their talking point is. So it's like, you didn't answer that at all. 100%. They're good at that. Politicians are great at that. Really good. Because as a listener, unless you're trying to perceive it,

you don't pick it up. You're just like, like right i'm just listening to a story you're like well he's not answering the question at all exactly the only one that knows is the host if they're good at articulating and you see that with so many politicians yeah they'll completely avoid the question have you had any politicians on i've had two on how'd that go so uh good carrie lake was super media trained obviously because she's from media. But she's more open, so I thought that one was good. And then I had Marianne Williamson on. She's a Democrat. I think she's in second or third on the Democrat side.

And that was interesting because I'm not a Democrat, but as a host, it's my job just to steer the conversation. And it's good. I think having opposing viewpoints is good on a podcast. Definitely. You should be able to entertain the other side no matter what your opinion. I get upset when I see shows that are so closed off and they're talking shit about

whatever and they won't even have the person on. At least have them on. See if there's some middle ground. Because you're not going to evolve. There's so many people I disagree with. But I'll take a bit or two from them. You want to stretch yourself. I think that's part of growth in general.

You want to go a little bit out of your comfort zone each time. And that's kind of like how you're going to get a more rounded personality. And that's why I'm evolving at a rapid pace because I take a piece from each guest right now. I've had on 600 people. Yeah. Apply it to my life.

And I'm just, yeah, I'm learning nonstop. I feel like you have like a blender and you guys put in like the best ideas every single day. And you're like drinking like knowledge smoothies. Yeah, for real. No, between my health my spirituality my business every aspect

has just skyrocketed the past year that's so exciting I'm excited for you yeah and the networking I can't see where this goes for the next like five ten years

yeah I think it's gotta be a big big thing for them for sure you gotta come out and visit the town sometime I'm gonna come

I'm gonna take my girl we'll come out there we'll drive out there three and a half hour drive you said about three and a half hours maybe we'll do a podcast in one of the old mines

or something yeah that'd be cool it's in utah it's in uh california california okay just on the other border how far is it from la about three hours okay so it's like in the middle of those kind of both got it either one interesting there's a tiny little airport if you ever want to if you don't feel like doing the drive there's like a little airport out there you could take a little tiny oh yeah commuter plane or something into i wonder what routes where it flies no commercial planes. It's going to be either some local pilot or something like that.

I know a couple pilots. A pilot is a good friend to have in your network. It is. I'm about a couple hours into

my license. I feel like living out there, I don't want to drive. For instance, when I have to go to New York or something, I have

to first drive three and a half hours to the airport and then fly. If I could just at least cut that down by flying.

Yes, you're dead by the time you land. The whole day is gone. It's I could just at least cut that down by flying. Yes. You're dead by the time you land. It's the whole day's gone. It's like trash. You got to show up two hours early too. So you're. Yeah. The whole day's gone.

Damn. Yeah. They need to get you a pilot license out there. How many hours do you need to get it? I think you need a hundred. A hundred hours of fly time. Yeah. And you flew two hours. I flew two.

So I got a long ways to go. Wow. Was it scary? I like it. It's actually the first flight's pretty cool. It's like you have an instructor with you, obviously. And it's almost like they have the training pedals like in one of those cars where they're steering.

But it feels very freeing. It feels kind of like what I need to do. Interesting. No, for real, it's one of the most useful skills you could probably have in business. Yeah, definitely. Because being able to fly your own plane saves you hours and stress.

I fly JSX out here. It's such a lifesaver. What is that? Jet Suite X. Is that kind of like a... It's like private jets. Yeah, so there's like 20 to 40 people. It's only $150, $200.

Whoa. Yeah. That's awesome. But you show up 30 minutes before your flight. Yeah. The networking's great. Yeah. And they don't chug your bags.

That's awesome. Yeah, so you can fly with uh people have dogs all the time yeah yeah it's super cool nice yeah if you're ever in la tons of routes from there all right yeah what were you doing before books uh i went to school for finance so i thought i was gonna do that i went to wall street yeah i went to columbia i got my degree and you were an ivy leaguer yeah for for graduate school undergrad i went to fsu i got my degree. Damn, you were an Ivy Leaguer? Yeah, for graduate school. Undergrad, I went to FSU. Then I got my master's from Columbia. I went to work for a real estate investment bank for about a week.

I really, really, really didn't like it. Damn, so imagine that feeling. You spend six years of school. And I'm still paying for it. You're paying for the debt and you hate the job first week. So your whole life got... Yeah, it turned upside down. It was one of those things where both my parents were teachers, so education was really important. And so it's like, are you going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a banker?

You kind of have a couple options. And so I was like, well, banker sounds cool. That sounds like a fun thing to do. I had watched Gordon Gekko. And then I just really didn't enjoy it. This was like, I graduated right when, kind of like we were packaging non-performing loans. This was like 2010-ish, right after the big financial collapse.

And so it just was not what I wanted to do. And I kind of one of those things where I sat around the cable. We're at this due diligence consulting gig. And I looked at all the people around me that were maybe 10, 20 years beyond me. And they all just looked miserable. You know, they were just like waiting to die, it felt like. And I was like, I can't do this. Damn.

And so like I quit. I traveled a bunch. I did like the backpacking thing. Yeah, in Europe. Backpacked for about, yeah, it was Southeast Asia and then South America. Oh, nice. So I did those two for like about a year,

backpacking. Wow. Came back, I was broke. I was still paying for Columbia and student loans, but I moved like deep into Brooklyn,

got like a three bedroom apartment sharing with four people, you know, one of those places. Classic. $500 a month or thing. Yeah. Like I was writing articles online

for like $5 and it was dumb because like using my degree I could be making much more, but at least I felt like thing. I was writing articles online for like $5. It was dumb because using my degree I could be making much more, but at least I felt free. I was like, I'm not in a bank. I'm not putting on a suit. I'm not doing that. That's how I met the authors because I was writing stuff. I met an author. They were writing a book about marketing.

That led me to meet another author. Then I just started working with authors and the marketing aspect of it. That was just like 12 years ago. Wow. What a journey. Marketing stuff for a while. I want to dive into some, some of those backpacking stories.

That is fascinating. So you did that for a full year? Yeah, about. Yeah. And that's kind of why I like that seed of hospitality got planted too. That's kind of why I bought this ghost town is because when I was doing the backpack, I was staying in hostels, you know, bunk beds, the whole thing. And, uh, I just loved sitting around and meeting people every night, like like with a similar mentality like kind of like maybe how you used to do every day

like learning their story and i just thought like that's cool maybe in the future if i didn't have to travel forever and do that that might be something fun that's cool that's what led to the bed and breakfast in austin that led to cerro gordo kind of yeah i can relate man i went to some bed and breakfast in ireland where only like six people can stay in them at a day so it's really intimate yeah and you just meet some cool people grandma's cooking you amazing food yeah like it's a vibe yeah i really love that stuff similar mentality if they are taking the leap to stay in a place like that maybe they're like you're closer to get along with them than maybe somebody random off the street yeah yeah ireland's a vibe man it

was uh so the town one of the towns i stopped in the amount of residents there was a hundred people and the town had four bars and they were all all packed every every resident was at the bar yeah all super packed wow like it was an interesting imagine growing up and that yes i think experiencing cultures is really important which places stood out to you on your trip? I loved, I loved like Bogota and Columbia. I love that. I love Thailand.

Everyone loves Thailand. I love Thailand. It's so good. The food is amazing. Yeah. I like went down to like Kofang Yang and all the islands off the East coast and like stay there for probably like a month and a half. Wow. And just,

you know, the, the hostel was $2 a night. I think like a plate of pad thai this tall is like a dollar a night. And so as somebody who had just quit my job after a week i didn't have a lot of money and so it was cool just to be able to like experience that for you know twenty dollars a day like you're living for like 20 bucks a day so you didn't have any agenda you were just winging the whole trip to figure out what was next not actually kind of like a fun

turn of events there like when i was on that trip i was still stuck in this mentality that i needed to be either like a doctor lawyer or a banker kind of thing and my friend had pirated for our work week sorry tim like i apologize uh and he sent me yeah yeah exactly he sent me the pdf and i was like it literally like blew my mind i was like oh my god like this is like there's another way to do this other than just you know working at a traditional job your whole life yeah so I came back and I was like, I'm not getting a traditional job. I'm gonna do something else. And another fun thing is like when I moved to New York originally for school, my other friend, um, one of my best friends growing up gifted me the 48 laws of power, which is Robert Green's book. So now to like know both of those guys have Robert beyond the book that I'm coming out with right now is this like full circle, you know, from like totally lost in my life to now like feeling like I'm in my purpose and I have a book coming

out about that and Robert's great Robert's name is on the book it's just like as cool as it gets a lot of stuff comes full circle it's just a matter of how long that circle takes I noticed I like that yeah I see it in so many areas of my life yeah that's how it feels like if you just put in the work man and have the right intention, it really does come back. And when you start seeing it happening, it's very comforting. It is, yeah. That's why I'm so giving because people are always like,

why do you give away all your connections, information, knowledge, money, and stuff? But I know it'll come back to me. Yeah, it's a scarcity mindset to kind of hold everything in, I think. Yeah, I agree. I think knowledge should be shared for a cheap price. That's why I like books.

I'm a big Audible guy. I mean, books books are amazing you have to think like an author's put many years of their life into their very best ideas and then you can buy it for like 25 bucks less on less exactly and people are like oh books no they're not it's like four years of someone's life you know yeah and like that's the cheapest thing you could ever buy really um and so i just like grew up loving books now to have like my own book coming out amazing man i used to love going to the library love going to barnes and noble man yeah smell of fresh books yeah it's unbeatable shout out to barnes and nobles they let you sit there and read that shit for free too and they don't they don't kick you out there's less

than there once was out there barnes and nobles yeah there's still a few out there yeah amazon bottom right i don't know who bought them it's's just, I think Amazon's eating everybody's lunch. Yeah. They're just like, that's where you go for books. It's where you go for podcasts. It's where you go. I mean, you go for everything now. Yeah.

And so it's hard for some of these brick and mortars to compete. Do you buy your books new or used? New. I just, I mean, working in books, I want to support the authors as much as I can. I'll like buy them. If I can buy them from the indie store, like if I'm somewhere I can go to the local bookstore, that's better um but i mean unless there's like unless there's like a serendipitous moment about a used book so for instance recently i was talking to my friend about

the hero's journey like robert uh joseph campbell it's like his whole thing yeah and then an hour later i was walking by a bookstore in brooklyn and that book was like in the front shelf i was like all right i'm gonna buy the used book because like it seemed like yeah, or something like that. That's destiny right there. Yeah. Yeah. I love books, man. Any, any books that really stand out to you? Um, well, my own ghost town living. I'll throw that out there. I enjoy that. But I think that like, for me, um, a friend of mine named Ryan holiday, he says that there's books that are called quake books that like shake you to your core and basically like make you rethink everything. And so I would say like, for me, the biggest three with that were like four hour work week when i

read it you know it's a little bit dated now but like i think the mentality is one that like still applies to like doing something traditional yep um meditations by marcus aurelius you know i haven't seen huge book yeah it's like so marcus aurelius was the emperor of rome like two thousand years ago and he wrote essentially what's like a journal to himself wow how to be a good person 2,000 years ago he never and never anticipated being published he was this is really because private thoughts for he was the most powerful man in the world at the time you know he was running the whole world yeah as he it was notes about like how to be a good father how to be a good brother how to be a good person and then it eventually got packaged and put into a book and

it holds up it's like every line is just like punches you in the face. Holy crap. I gotta check that out. It's only like maybe 120 pages and it's like it's not like narrative. It's like little sentences that are kind of

connected to each other. Yeah, check it out. I need to and that's my style because I don't like the super long ones. No, it's just like this you can pick up

for five minutes and you're going to walk away with something you're like, oh, I can use that today. You know, because like he was the father

of stoicism. Basically, one of the main guys in stoicism and stoicism is supposed to be like this like practical philosophy that you use in your everyday life yeah and so like that that book is just like mind-blowing it's awesome there's another one called the short on the shortness of life by seneca same thing small book just like mind-blowing and then uh i really like this book called the war of art um and it's like by this guy named stephen pressfield and so he's talking about like the creative act and how difficult it is I really like this book called The War of Art. And it's by this guy named Steven Pressfield.

So he's talking about the creative act and how difficult it is. Sometimes he calls it resistance, how hard it is to put your work out there sometimes and get places. So those are, I would say, my favorite books. Interesting. I'm going to check out that. You said Meditations? Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I'm going to get that on Audible on the way home.

Immediately. Text me. Let me know how you think about it. It's really good. That's cool. I've been leaning more towards podcasts lately, but I want to get back into audiobooks. Yeah, that one's good.

And that one, like I said, put it on for five minutes and pause it. You're still going to take away something. Wow. That's good. You got to really think about what he's saying. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty heavy.

One of those. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Do you do any meditations? A little bit. I recently got into Headspace. Yeah, I used to have that. Yeah, just because like up there it's difficult. Living in the middle of nowhere, you need some type of structure sometimes. And so like

I was never a meditation fan, you know, but like that's helped a lot. It's really been like grounding. And I think that the other thing is just I live in 400 acres with nothing all around me. And so there's mountains that are right across the valley from me is mount whitney which

is the tallest mountain in the lower 48 so that that sense of like awe you look up here you know it takes your breath away actually it's been like the biggest change i would say between before i lived there and after i lived there um because i think like in cities you can get on different ways like i think that like huge orchestras can be like awe-inspiring i do think that the term awesome is like really thrown around way too much. It is. Not everything is awesome. Yeah.

You know, like an article, that's like a default answer to like, I didn't pay attention. You're like, oh, that's awesome. Yeah, for sure. It's probably not awesome. I think out there, like there is some like,

the awe of nature is like true. I think that out there, that and a little bit of headspace has been like the biggest change for me. And you said there's no animals out there? Not a bunch because we don't have water. We're in the high desert. We're at 8,500 feet in elevation.

It's really tall. There's almost no water. We have small rabbits and stuff, but there's no big game like deer or anything like that. That's a shame. I love deer. I grew up in Jersey where they're everywhere. Literally on the street.

You got to be careful going home at night. I almost had to run in with one. Did you? I think I would have died if it went through my windshield. His horns were goddamn. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't mess with deer, man. Especially the one Joe Rogan posts. Those elk. Oh, no. I do not. I think those are the ones you stop and you go around. Yeah.

Or you let them pass. Yeah, exactly. For real. Any podcasts you're listening to right now? See, I don't know. I'm kind of in the middle of nowhere. But I've been. Oh, wait.

Do you even have Wi-Fi there? We have Wi-Fi now. When I moved up there, I didn't. Holy crap. Yeah, I didn't. I was using like. I had. I get like two bars of AT&T.

So I was using like a hotspot, you know. Oh, yeah. I couldn't stream anything. So I wasn't doing much. Oh, so you couldn't even watch videos? No. This was right. You know, this was like when like Tiger King just came out.

Yeah, yeah. Or whatever. And like everyone's like talking about it. I was like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. So I don't listen to a ton of podcasts just because like I don't have the like infrastructure still. And I love to just like go wander. What I'll usually do is just put on like a movie soundtrack.

That's kind of what I love. It's like, you know. Star Wars. Yeah, Star Wars or like Interstellar or, you know, like Requiem for a Dream. They're inspiring. Yeah. And you just like,

I feel like my thoughts are like firing. I feel like you're in a movie, you know, walking through the mountains. Movie soundtracks are great workout and motivation. Yeah. It's kind of my go-to right now. Yeah.

I love that. Dude, it's been fun. Anything you want to promote or close off with? I know you've got the book. Yeah. Just the book, Ghost Town Living.

You know, the YouTube is the same, same name, Ghost Town Living. It's about living up in an old mining town, trying to bring it back to life. I think people will like it. Awesome. We'll link it in the video.

Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for watching, guys. Check out the book and I'll see you guys next time.