Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Following Your Intuition | Comedian, Brian Volk-Weiss

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

This week’s conversation is with Brian Volk-Weiss, the founder and president of Comedy Dynamics.Brian stands at the forefront of comedy’s evolution in the 21st century.Since the launch of Comedy Dynamics in 2008, he has guided the award-winning brand to becoming the nation’s largest independent producer and distributor of one-hour comedy specials, while initiating innovative partnerships with Amazon, ROKU, and HULU—where it ranks as one of the platform’s top three most popular comedy channels.The company has worked with a wide range of established and emerging comedic talent including Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Jim Gaffigan, Ali Wong, David Cross, and many more.17 Comedy Dynamics releases have been Grammy-nominated (with three wins), including the unprecedented all 5 nominations in the Comedy Album category for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.And while comedy is Brian’s passion, this conversation is about intuition and risk.It’s about having a tolerance for failure and being willing to take a chance when you see there’s an opportunity on the table.It’s about having a vision for what’s possible and chipping all in.I found this conversation to be super inspiring – there’s something in it for all of us, regardless of your craft._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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and Disney and Paramount Libraries. So I always thought it was crazy to have a website that you would drag people to. So we started building this infrastructure that put us where everybody was. So if you're in Alabama, we're on Cox. If you're in Denver, we're on Dish. Yada, yada, yada, till we covered the entire country. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind this conversation, behind these conversations, this podcast is

to learn and to apply the insights from people who have dedicated their life efforts towards mastery. And it's a unique conversation because we're not just looking for the tactics and there are no tricks, there's no hacks, there's no shortcuts, there's no secrets, but we're working to understand their psychological framework, that sturdy, resilient, flexible, dynamic approach to life. We want to understand what they're searching for. And as well, we want to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

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I'd love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right, Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of

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And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Brian Volk Weiss. He's the founder and president of Comedy Dynamics. Brian stands at the forefront of comedy's evolution in the 21st century. He's been in it and he's

leading it from a business perspective and an opportunity perspective for so many. And since the launch of Comedy Dynamics in 2008, he's guided his company to become the nation's largest independent producer and distributor of one-hour comedy specials. So that's one of his main marks in the industry. And while initiating innovative partnerships, and I love this part of the conversation because his business IQ and acumen comes alive. And he's got these partnerships with Amazon, Roku, Hulu, where it ranks as one of the platform's top three most popular comedy channels. And so he understands it. He understands the business and the value of comedy and how to put people together. And his company has worked with a wide range of folks, Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart, Jim

Gaffigan, David Cross, and so many others. And obviously comedy is Brian's passion. This conversation is about intuition and risk. It's about having a tolerance for failure and being willing to take a chance when you see there's an opportunity on the table. And something that I think about a lot is our work is to prepare for the opportunities. And that's the mental work. That is the inner investment.

So that when opportunities present, we capture them. And that's a big part of this conversation. And it's also about having this idea, this vision of what's possible and then chipping in toward it. There's no hedging of bets here. Like, how do you chip in and do it well? And I found this conversation like to be really inspiring, both from a business perspective and an insight perspective.

And I think there's something in it for all of us, regardless of your craft. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Brian Volk-Weiss. Brian, how's it going? It is going well. How are you, Michael? That's what's up. You know, so first off, lead off batter here, congrats on your body work, like incredible what you've done and what you've built and how you've done it. So I'm super stoked to talk to you about two main themes and then, you know, who knows where else we go, but like how you built your business, a network in particular, and then how you started from, you know, really ground zero. And that thought about pulling yourself up from your bootstraps and working your way from a free

internship all the way through to being a principal, you know, founder of a network, like really cool. It's a great question. And, you know, it's funny when you're actually doing something and building something, you know, you're so you're in the field, you're in the trenches. For me, obviously not being a Marine storming a beach, the the trenches are phone calls and meetings and emails. And while you're doing it, it's funny, it's only five years later, 10 years later, do you really look back? And it's always interesting to me because looking back on what we've been able to build, there's things that I see as being pivotal, but I always wonder had we ended up in a different way or even here having followed a different path you know would those points have been any different this is the good stuff this is where

this is where i want to go is like because on that thought i do the same thing you know there's there are some watershed events that stick with me but i'm not sure that those are the pivotal ones yeah like there's things behind the scenes that happen where it's like somebody said hey why don't we why don't we call mike you know and i'm sure somebody said hey that you're not even quite sure of the gravity of it but someone said you know brian might be a good fit here and it just happened to be something somewhere down the line that ended up shifting a trajectory or an interest or something. So I don't know if we're saying the same thing, but I do think about the watersheds and the things behind the scenes

that have been influential beyond our purview. Well, one of the things that I always try and keep in mind. And I'm an optimist, or at the very least, I'm a realist leaning towards optimism. But I've always been fascinated with failure. Always. And my whole childhood college, I was a student of failure and I still read about failure aggressively. But now that I literally yesterday was the 20 year mark of me being out here in L.A. and show business. And I'm I'm as interested in my failures than I am in what are perceived to be successes. I'm in my office right now looking at a giant, it's not giant, it's probably about three feet by two feet, sign that's a prop from a horror movie that I made. It says it's a sign that was on a house says 8989 Redstone.

And it's my only write off in my whole career. About five years ago, we made a horror film, complete mess, everything went wrong. And, you know, and yet I have it bolted to my wall, partially because it's a reminder that, you know, at the very least don't get cocky. There are monsters where the map ends and you want to avoid them just because you can't see them doesn't mean that they're not there. But yeah, I've always been more or at least equally interested in what's gone wrong than as with what's gone right. But your question happened to be about what I perceive to have been what went right.

And the physical version of what went right is I guess and then two is a book that I read in 2006. But basically, I've been a huge student of show business since at least junior high, maybe earlier. And one of the things that I've learned and I've always known about is show business. You know, it's funny. If you think about the airline, the airplane business, you know, Boeing and Airbus and Lockheed Martin and Skunk Works and everything. They're a technology dependent business. Somebody who doesn't know anything about airplanes or the airplane business knows that an airplane coming off the assembly line in 2019 is exponentially more technologically advanced than at the same company, say Boeing, 80 years ago, 50 years ago. So, but what a lot of people don't realize is show business has also, uh, it's so technology driven. It always has been, you know, sheet music, uh, really was the beginning of the modern era. Um, modern copyright law, so much of what governs the protections that artists and labels and

companies and producers have now in 2019 is directly tied back to sheet music being sold in Manhattan in the 1800s. Maybe London in the 1700s. I don't know. So I always knew that. So that's, I guess, the first piece. The second piece was in 2006, I read a book called The Long Tail. And the book, I always mention what year I read it, 2006, because it basically, it's a very important year in that it's before the iPhone. It's way before streaming. YouTube existed, but in a very different form than what it is today.

And I think the long tail came out in 2005, but I read it in 06. And basically, where if I could be like, hey, I was smart. I read the book. So that was the first thing that had to happen. The second thing that happened was I bet everything that the book was right and would be right, because what the book basically did was it predicted everything that would happen. Everything that we've done and we were ready for when it was ready was based on in 2006 reading this book that would predict everything that would come. It didn't name Netflix. I don't think the word Netflix is in the book. It sure as hell didn't predict that Amazon would be streaming. It didn't predict the Apple TV. It didn't predict

the iPhone by name. It didn't mention any of those things by name. But other than the names, it got everything right. And then the part where I was extremely lucky was the book was right. There was a real good chance I bet everything on this book, and the book was wrong. I've read lots of books, and I've ignored lots of books. It was very lucky for me that the book – I literally changed everything we were doing within a week of finishing the book. I may have even done it while reading the book. But that is without a doubt, as it relates to where we are today and what we've done, it's based on having read that book and having implemented a course of action that now is in its 13th year of continual implementation. Okay, because I love this because this sounds like it's an epicenter of change.

And I want to dig into something that's not talked about with you and see if we can try to put our arms around it, but it's intuition. And your statement, which is, you know, I've read lots of books, but then I read this book, now I'm going to fill in some gaps, and something clicked. Something made sense to me. And I bet the farm, you know, and you, I think if I have the dates right, you read it in 2006, Comedy Dynamics was launched in 08. So like, it sounds like it was the origin point for, you know, something that's been wildly successful across multiple platforms. So let me stop you right there for a second. And it's very interesting what you just said, because Comedy Dynamics launched in 08. We had multiple experiments and failures that would lead to Comedy Dynamics. The original name of Comedy Dynamics was New Wave Dynamics. That became Comedy Dynamics launched in 07. And before New Wave Dynamics, we had done a partnership with another company under another name.

And Comedy Dynamics was actually the third attempt at what we're doing now. That's a detail I normally don't get into. Yeah. It's not a sprint or anything. No, that's really cool. Okay. And like, I love the fact that you're riffing on like the mistakes and the failures and the lessons learned because they don't seem mortal or tragic to you in any way.

They're not embarrassing. Well, I'll bet that they're difficult while you're going through it, but it sounds like your lenses and appreciation for learning, um, mitigates the pain of the mistake or the failure, the financial or emotional stuff that goes with it. But I don't want to guess that. I'd love to. I think I've read enough about successful people that did it from scratch to know that it's impossible to do what they did without staggering amounts of failure. So I knew if I was to try and do it, of which I'm still trying, it was impossible to avoid failure. So it just set expectations phenomenally before I even got out here. Okay, before we do the intuition piece,

what about let's let's hone in on this is it sounds like you don't bet the farm like i know that that's a phrase we talked about but it like if to make these mistakes and still be able to move forward i'm trying to understand like how do you risk there's and just for like clarity there's at least five ways we know of risking there's financial risk there's emotional risk there's social risk there's moral risk there's physical risk there's at least five ways we know of risking. There's financial risk, there's emotional risk, there's social risk, there's moral risk, there's physical risk. There's at least five ways that we think about risk. But when it comes to this economic, social risk in business, how do you gauge it? How do you do that? Well, basically, there were two theoretical risks involved. But as you'll hear in a second, really only one.

There was technically reputational risk and there was actual financial risk. There was no reputational risk because I either had no reputation or I had nothing to lose. That's the first thing. But technically, it existed. And to that point, many, many people at the highest levels of the business now have told me separately that they were in staff meetings at some point 10 years ago or so and heard what I was doing. And they thought it was the craziest thing they'd ever heard. And a lot of them were like, well, you know, a lot of these people are agents. And a lot of them had the same thought, which was, well, Brian's gone crazy and

I can't wait to hire him to be an agent here in a couple of years because he'll be bankrupt. So that's how irrelevant to bad our reputation was or my reputation was at the time. The financial risk, I mean, staggering to the point where I feel very lucky, not that I ever would have done it or could have done it, but I feel very lucky. See, I went to college and I up until I got out to L.A., I wanted to be a director. Had I known what was awaiting me, it would have been very clear that I should have gone to business school. But luckily, I did not go to business school because had I gone to business school, I never in a billion years would have done what we ended up doing. And basically what we ended up doing, the CFO said once around the 2008 period, like we had to invent new accounting law to get through those days. You know, at a time when our EBITDA might have been, you know, 800 grand, we were spending like $1.4

million to make a single stand up special. So and by the way, not only that, like, within six months of that expenditure, we're probably making 10 more of a lesser amount, but probably in aggregate, those other 10 cost another million. So like I said, when our EBITDA was way below a million, it may have been below half a million for all I know. We were spending multiple times that. And it's one thing to do that when you're a public company. It's one thing to do that when you're, you know, backed by a big company or, you know, you're whatever. But we were like a private little company that like it truly was ignorance was bliss. A. B. Luckily, the book was right.

And we absolutely and this is a metaphor, of course, but it could not be more accurate. We completely jumped off a cliff, no parachute, knowing goddamn well, if we hit the ground, we would die. Like no doubt about it. None. And luckily, a trampoline appeared that not only appeared, but was strong enough to safely break our fall. And that trampoline was this company that used to ship plastic discs through the US mail. All of a sudden, and I didn't know this was happening. Again, maybe I'm foolish to be so honest about this, but it cracks me up. And again, I feel no reason to hide this at all. But this company that was shipping plastic discs through the mail that I never used started this thing I didn't know what it was called

streaming. They hadn't told anybody. They hadn't announced it. Nobody knew what it was. Luckily, as we're falling through the air, having spent all this money, I randomly have a meeting and all of a sudden, because they're getting into the market and they got to spend bucket loads of money to catch up with HBO and Comedy Central and Showtime, they start buying all these things as I'm falling through the air and we survive. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.

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Okay, we all know the story of Netflix and how they have changed our experience with television and whatever. And we all know that they, or most, I guess, many people would know that they buy a lot, right? They're a buyer. And you happen to be one of those massive success stories because the timing is right, the risk appetite was right. Now, did you have that vision? This is really cool for me to hear because I'm wondering, and maybe it's good.

I don't know the difference between Comedy Dynamics and Comedy Dynamics Network. I don't think I know the difference between those two. So I do want to understand that. But did you, when you were starting. Almost everybody who knows the difference works here. So you're, you're, you're not alone. Almost everybody. Okay, good.

You know, I want to, before you go into the difference, like, I was a little nervous to have this conversation with you. And the reason I was a little nervous to have this conversation with you. And the reason I was a little nervous and I mean, the people that I've spent time with is ridiculous. Like their intelligence, their prowess, their visionary skills, whatever, whatever. And something happens with people that are either comedians or around comedians like the intelligence and the wit and the whole thing is so radical to me i'm so in awe of it so i really appreciate this really subtle humor that you've had because you're allowing me to take a nice little breath and go okay okay we're gonna be okay here because i love it i love banter and i love the edge of it um because it pushes people right to the edge comedy does hopefully if it's done well and so i say all that because i i hear

your humor embedded in there and so anyways can you can you get it's done well and so i say all that because i i hear your humor embedded in there and so anyways can you can you get it's all funny i mean listen shit's funny after it works yeah right yeah fine but it's funny now okay so what what is the difference between the two so basically here's what happened so at a time where basically five companies, including us, were producing stand-up specials at volume and at quality, us being the only non-public company. One of my favorite things is reading articles where it's like Netflix, HBO, Comedy Central, Showtime, and Comedy Dynamics, and they go on and on. And I'm always like, one of these companies is not a multi-billion dollar company. One of these companies is not a public company.

Like it always cracks me up that we get bunched in with them. But basically, it was a very significant variable because what happened was when you produce specials the way we do we license them to other companies so as i was telling you while we were falling through the air and the netflix trampoline saved our asses we license them to netflix and that meant after a finite amount of time, the ownership of them reverted back to us. So what that meant, because we started so early, like around, like I said, our first original that we owned was 2005, actually. But we started making 10 a year or more, I believe in like 08, we had the biggest private library of stand-up comedy. Comcast or Dish or Cox, you can't get access to HBO or Comedy Central or Netflix's library because their entire business model is about people paying a fee to have access to that library.

We didn't have that variable. So we were the only game in town for the quality and volume that existed to do deals with all the cable providers. So starting in 2014, and we didn't finish this process until early 2018. So it took basically about four years. We did deals with everybody. So from Comcast to Charter to InDemand to Hulu and Xbox and Google and a thousand companies, not a thousand, but hundreds of companies you've never heard of. We built this network and it's literally a network. It is a physical. It's not actually physical at all. It's all done digitally. So forget I said physical. It's the opposite of physical. It's digital. But basically, these are binding contracts that allow us to deliver anything we want to all of these places where the public

already is. So the way I always explain it to people is I call it, this is my own description so if there's anything wrong with it this is on me, I call it the Coca-Cola model. And what I mean by that, because that could be taken in many different ways, what I mean by it is basically what Coca-Cola does, obviously they put sugar and water, some food coloring, and hey, there's our product. But what they do is they spend a lot of time and energy marketing

so that if and when you become thirsty, and everybody always becomes thirsty at some point in the day, you are like, hey, maybe I'll have a Coca-Cola. But the Coca-Cola corporation does not make you go to Coca-Cola headquarters or the Coca-Cola bottling plant. They put the Coke where you are. So if you're at a gas station, there's Coke. You're in a movie theater, there's probably Coke. If you go to McDonald's, there's Coke, whatever. So I could list a hundred places there's Coke if you want me to, by the way. I don't have to stop at just three. No, we're good. I get it. You're right. It's not an eight hour interview. I'll stop at three. But anyway, that's what we

did. So we basically said, we're not going to drag people to ComedyDynamics.com. And by the way, that's what everybody was doing when we started. There were all these crazy websites that I always thought were so stupid, Laugh.com or HaHaHa.com or ChuckleWhatever.com. stupid to do that because, and again, we were in the minority, to put it mildly, because I'm like, the amount of money and energy to drag people to a website they've never heard of is ludicrous. And one of the common things that I've known about for a long time is that most successful breakthroughs coast on the backs of prior breakthroughs. Great example is Facebook. Facebook probably would have not done so well without the Harvard infrastructure.

Netflix is another great example. They were shipping plastic discs of movies they did not make to people paying for them. They had a brilliant idea, brilliant technology, brilliant everything, but still they built Netflix on the backs of the Warner Brothers and Disney and Paramount Libraries. So I always thought it was crazy to have a website that you would drag people to. So we started building this infrastructure that put us where everybody was. So if you're in Alabama, we're on Cox. If you're in Denver, we're on Dish. Yada, yada, yada, till we covered the entire country. Then if you don't want to watch our product for $3.99 to rent or $9.99 to buy, well, then you could wait till it's on Amazon Prime or

Hulu or whatever, and then you could watch it there. And it's all good for us because we make money no matter what. And it's good for the public because, you know, they're laughing when, you know, maybe they didn't have a good day. But on top of that, basically, they don't have to do anything they wouldn't have done anyway because it's already there. And that's the network. I love it. Did you have that vision when you kicked off when you read the book or you kicked off comedy dynamics? Or was the vision smaller in the sense like, hey, I love this humor. I love the comedy thing.

Why don't we create some specials? Why don't we get some first-class comedians in here and get a crowd together and create an experience? And then we'll make money at the gate and maybe we'll be able to sell it later. How was the early thinking? I had the vision because I read the book. That you could create the network experience where you could go to the distributors and sell the content. The book predicted everything that we would do. The thing I got lucky on, I was brave that I bet it all, but I was lucky that the book was right. And to be honest with you, it was real luck. Here's the thing,

like going back to something you sort of asked earlier, like what it really was at the end of the day, it was about freedom. And it still is about freedom in that if the book was right, we would have freedom. We would have freedom to make what we want and put it out there the way we want. It would eliminate risk because there's tremendous risk on making things on spec. And like Boeing, they don't green light a brand new airplane

until they have a buyer. So the 777 needed a buyer. The 787 needed a buyer. They needed to have a launch customer and a certain amount of units sold before they green lit the new plane. So we didn't have that. We just were like, ah, fuck it. Here we go.

So we just started making a staggering amount of specials. I would say three years in, we were making more specials than anybody. And because we were providing the specials to a lot of companies like Showtime and whatever, even though a lot of people perceived our work to have been made by Showtime, which was entirely proper, we owned it. And we were the ones fronting the risk because we would make it and then Showtime or Comedy Central or whoever would get to decide if they wanted to buy it or not. And if anybody didn't buy it, well, then all that money we had spent

would either be completely lost or take forever to recoup. So that, but part of the good news for us was because nobody was really doing it like we were with the volume and quality, we had a tremendous advantage because a lot of these other companies were able to, if they wanted to put out one special a month, they needed a company like ours to help their output. So it ended up working, but we were very lucky. By the way, I can't even begin to tell you how many competitors of ours we used to have that we don't have anymore that told me at some point, like, hey you do it why'd you do it how'd you know and i'm like well i read the long tail and so many people said to me oh man i read the long tail

but we didn't do anything about it so that that's where i like if there's anything wrong, but again, here's why I don't feel like I was brave. I feel like I didn't have any choice. Like I said, I wanted to have freedom. I wanted to be able to do what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it, which we have now, by the way. And we've only had it for about a year and a half at the most, arguably only for about a year. And in order to have freedom, this was the only path forward. So that's sort of why I don't feel that brave, because the goal was to have freedom. And there was just no other way to achieve it. Yeah, you know, it's the same thing that mountain climbers of Everest that have one leg say, you know, it's like, how or why?

And they say, you know, I just I was compelled to do it. And how'd you do it? Well, you know, it's like I just did it. I mean, it leaves me a little bit going. Yeah, well, OK. Yeah, I get it. But at the same time, there was decisions that you had to make, which is like, oh, my God, like if we don't sell this thing, it could be the end of our business. And like, how did you how did you manage sleep?

Like, that's a super simple question. Like, was that an issue or did you? Absolutely an issue. Yeah. How'd you do that? Listen, at some point I discovered the miracle of Tylenol PM. But, you know, you build a tolerance to that too. But listen, it sucked.

I didn't sleep. I still don't sleep frequently. It comes with the job. Here's a huge curiosity I have. If and when I get to retire, if I'm in that log cabin in Montana, I've given up the chair, I've given up the badge, I've given up the uniform, I got enough money in the bank where my grandkids and their grandkids don't have to worry about money. I wonder, I always wonder, will I be able to sleep like a normal person? And I don't know. I don't know. I do know I slept like a baby in college. I do know, and earlier, I do know I

slept fine the first at least five years I was in LA. So I do believe, hopefully in retirement, I will sleep again normally. But to be honest with you, I feel like not sleeping is a tremendous or not sleeping normally or a full night's sleep is an asset because I cannot tell you how many times if I'm awake between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., I will have a thought or a fear, just one in those three awful hours. That is so important. It plugs a hole, or it creates a new business, or it tells me to reach out to like, so I feel I wish there was a way to track this kind of thing, like maybe go through 16 years of emails, find every email I sent between 2 a.m. and 6 p.m. and I send two emails between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., I bet the percentage of important emails of those two emails a day is disproportionate to the 500 a day period. You're onto something really interesting, which is accessing theta brainwaves because when we're in that dreamy kind of tired sleepy state there's a lot of theta in our brain and theta is snapped together to creativity you know and so we're not encumbered by the beta which

is like this high worry anxiety you know stimulating typewaves. And so it sounds like you've got access to a whole different state. And in that state, there's some clarity sometimes. Now, to me, that's not like for me, sleep is like the research on it. My experience in it is it's so important. So I want to get like, how do you sleep? Like, what kind of hours are we talking about over the course of, let's say, a week? If I'm lucky, you know, I have two somewhat normal nights of sleep a week, if I'm lucky. I would say in a 52-week year, that might happen 10 times.

It's so funny. We should call my wife get have her answer this i'd be curious to hear what she has to say yeah are you i've never said this before i mean i take something to sleep every night for at least at least 10 years uh and nothing crazy, you know, like I said, Tylenol PM, Benadryl, something like that. But yeah, and that NyQuil and that only to a certain degree does anything. But yeah, I would say, you know, I usually go to bed between 11 and 1. The odds of me, by the way, here's an easy thing to tell you. I, I never, I mean, 365 nights a year, the alarm wakes me up less than 10 times a year. So you're up before the alarm. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So, and then, so we're talking like five hours, six hours on average. It's, It's four to five a night tops.

Okay. And then have you tried melatonin? Yeah. I believe that to be a placebo, or at least to me, utterly, utterly zero. I'm convinced I could take a bottle of it and be up for a week. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft.

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slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B dot com slash finding mastery. Okay, so you don't sound like you're struggling with vibrance, you know, like a vibrancy. It doesn't sound like you're struggling there, right? Yeah, very much in that regard. Always been like this. Okay, do you, what is the cost or what's the compromise of poor sleep? Is it, do you get agitated and frustrated and pissed off? Do you get tired at

two and take a nap? Like how, how does your brain do it? I don't take naps. I would say, you know, I'm exponentially less agitated now than I was five years ago, let alone 10 years ago and likely sleeping way less. Just power through it. It is what it is. You read these books about what the people did crossing oceans in the 1600s. How'd they do that? They just got through it. Most of them didn't make it. Yeah, that's it. Most of them didn't make it.

Yeah, that's true. Some of them didn't make it. Yeah, most of them didn't make it. But the ones that did, they did figure it out. Yeah. I mean, you read about what that was like, crossing the ocean back then. And it's like, first of all, how'd you do it? How'd you get through that?

Second of all, a lot of these people went back and forth. Yeah. Which also amazes me. it how'd you get through that second of all a lot of these people went back and forth yeah just amazes me like you read about it and you're like that it if anyone alive today went through that that would be the worst thing that had happened to a human in 2019 within yes that didn't happen death yeah it's crazy and some of these people went back and forth 10 times. Yeah, I was fascinated by Magellan for a long time. Did a deep dive on him and kind of how he did it first to circumnavigate the world. And he didn't make it on his voyage back. So he never technically did it.

But all that being said, what he was able to accomplish and do and to write the maps as he was going it was like it's outrageous we don't do that we're looking for 68 degrees you know soft cushion in our bed and um you know ample hydration throughout every day i'm i'm a i'm a i'm putting my hand up i'm looking for that too but i'm sure as hell sure that that doesn't create the right condition to go the entire full distance. And so there's some compromises in here. It sounds like sleep is a real struggle for you. But I also don't get that you're saying, you know, life is freaking sucks because I'm not sleeping.

So I don't know where to go with it. I don't think life sucks. I feel that life has been better every year than the year before. Sometimes much better, sometimes a little bit better. I had one bad year. I've been out here 20 years. I had one bad year. 2013 was bad. It was bad every month. At the end of a quarter, it was bad. At the end of six months, it was bad. At the end of the year, looking back, it was bad. That was the only bad year I ever had. But other than that, and then, at least sometimes net every year. And, you know, the thing I love about money, you know, I always feel there's like two things about money. There's fear of not having money. So the minute you have enough money that you can lose fear

of not having it, that's the first qualifier for money. So it's like, I always think it's like, if you have a million or 2 million or a billion or 2 billion, doesn't really matter. The big deal is if you're like negative 80 grand and you got 600 bucks in the bank and your mortgage is $4,000 a month, that's a state of life. And then if you got half a million in the bank and like your mortgage is $8,000 a month, that's a completely different state of life. And you either have money so you don't have to worry about money or you don't have it. So that's the first thing about money. It's really a binary view on money. The other thing about money that I do like is it's

a consistent scorecard that obviously, if you take into account inflation, goes back at least 500 years. So, you know, if I know what my expenses are, and I know what my income is, you know, it's like when you cut a tree down and you see the rings, you can figure out what was the plentiful year for water, what was not a plentiful year for water. And that's what I love about money. Yeah, I have a awful photograph. I took it at the Coca-Cola Museum about 10 years ago. I took it to a display case, glass, there's glare, horrible picture. I've been at the museum since, by the way, they don't even have this on display anymore. But I'm looking at it right now, actually, from across the room. It's what you and I today would call a spreadsheet. And it shows the amount of Coca-Cola formula sold in, I believe, I can't read it from here,

but I believe it's 1896, 1897, and 1898. And then it has about 40 cities on the list. And what I find very inspiring about the spreadsheet and the reason why such a shitty photograph is framed on my wall is there's multiple cities on the list that for your and my and our parents' entire lives, maybe even grandparents, Coca-Cola was always for sale in those cities. And on the spreadsheet, there's like Boston, zero, 1896, zero, 1897, 612 liters, 1899 or 1898. And that's what I love about

money. And again, for lack of a better expression spreadsheets is you can really track how things are going so anyway now that i've rambled back to your point yeah i i uh 20 years i've been doing this now as of yesterday i am it has been a tough road no doubt about it, but I would argue as joyful as any person could experience outside of family situations. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Like I'm, as you're talking and telling stories and weaving in and out of like your experiences and your insights, I'm trying to put my finger on it, but there's something about you. And I don't say this often, you know, like there's something really inspiring about the way that you attack, you know, and the way that you are sharing, even like how you attack life. It's super inspiring

for me. I'm on the other side of this going, okay, so I hear potential. I hear vision and I hear opportunity. I hear luck. I hear humility. I hear all these different things. And I'm soaking in and going, God, there's so much more for me to do. But that's not like a desperate thought. Yeah, you feel the same way, right?

Same way, yeah. Yeah, yeah. right same way yeah yeah yeah i now know everything i consider to be big things in 2019 that we're doing i'll barely remember in five years let alone 10 i'll have to see an email or a picture and then god willing i still remember the importance of those it It's just, I don't know how this is for other people, but to me, it's all a blur. It's like, it's just, I do it, it works or it doesn't work. I move forward accordingly. The irony is, I am a very nostalgic person. I'm not, I'm the antithesis of somebody who would not appreciate the little moments. I collect relics from all sorts of businesses, successes and failures, from Kodak to Standard Oil. I'm obsessed with Standard Oil. And I definitely save things from our own exploits. But it's all a blur.

It's absolutely a blur. Sometimes a week ago was a blur. A month ago was a blur. But there's no, there's, like I said, you do something, it works or it doesn't work. If it works, you repeat it and improve it. If it doesn't work. If it works, you repeat it and improve it. If it doesn't work, you stop as soon as you can. What is it about Standard Oil that inspires you? A couple of things. It's funny. I don't know if anyone's ever asked me that before.

Here's the two things that inspire me. The origin of the company and the end of the company. The origin of the company I find so interesting and to be honest with you this relates directly to what if anyone views what we've accomplished as an accomplishment, I'm in the same boat. Black shit was bubbling out of the planet for thousands of years. Everybody saw it. There's written documentation of oil bubbling out of the ground that millions and millions and millions of people saw before him not only did he figure out hey we could do something with this he did it he literally became the richest person to this day whoever lived if you take into account

inflation and the fact of what he had, a lot of that, by the way, little asterisk is because they didn't have a thing back then called the income tax. But anyway, that's an asterisk. But yeah, so I just love that he saw something that tens of millions of people saw before him. And he not only did something about it, but he became the richest person who ever lived. So that's I love that part of the story.

The other part of the story is the end of it. It's an amazing story. The U.S. government in something at the time which was unprecedented declared his company an illegal monopoly. And it went on for 10 years. It started at lower courts and went up and up and up and up and up to the Supreme Court. The day that the Supreme Court was going to make a decision, Rockefeller was playing golf and a runner comes up, hands him a note. Rockefeller nods, hands the note back. The runner goes off. The priest, who obviously the whole world knew what was happening that day, the priest says to Rockefeller, hey, if you don't mind me asking, I'm a little curious. What did the note say?

And Rockefeller said, the United States Supreme Court has decided that my life's work is an illegal monopoly and must be shattered within the next six months. The priest turns ghost white and very pale and starts getting very nervous. And he goes, John, I don't mean to be selfish at this moment. Obviously, this is a horrible day for you. But you told me to put all the church's money in Standard Oil. I have put all our money in Standard Oil. What's going to happen to the church? And Rockefeller says, is there any money at all you didn't put in Standard Oil? Anything? And the priest is like, I mean, not really. I mean, I guess we had the collection money from this morning. I got a couple bucks saved, but no, that's it. And Rockefeller goes, I suggest you take that money you have not in Standard he was right was because Standard Oil was worth exponentially more broken up than it was combined. And that is what actually made him the worst day in the history of capitalism, he immediately knew

was actually a good day. And I cannot tell you how many times I've had bad days, bad emails, bad calls, taken solace from that story. And it gave me strength not even to be depressed for a minute. And sure enough, just like Rockefeller knew, but he didn't have the guidance that I did, knowing that story, it ended up not mattering. And half the time when you have a bad day, it actually does end up working out for the best. No one's more shocked about that than me, by the way. Statistically speaking, it is a fact, at least for us. But one would not think that would be the case. Really cool. I thought as you were telling the two parts of Standard Oil, and you started,

I was like, oh, he's a systems thinker. He likes businesses and structures and organizations. And then you drop right into the end of it, which is like his insight and his insight that influenced the systems and structures and destructuring of his monopoly. Like, so is that okay? The story is great. And the way you told it's better. And, and, but are you, is that a fair takeaway that you really enjoy systems and structures and ecosystems as well as the individual, but more so about systems? Or do I have that wrong? No, it's an interesting thing.

I'm obsessed with systems. I love systems. I won't use Google Docs. I can't stand digital spreadsheets. I hate Excel. I wish I was born 20 years earlier so I didn't have to deal with all this modern nonsense, which I don't think works. But I read a book called Rescuing Prometheus almost 20 years ago. And that is it tells four stories about system management and the birth of system management. System management was born to develop the Atlas missile system, the ICBM. That's how it was created. Basically, the scientists realized there was no way humankind could create an ICBM without a new way of thinking and building and

engineering. That led to the first system. The second system was the building of what would become something like space system failures. It's one of these books that's like $300 a copy because they only make like a thousand of them. And it is literally a list of every single spaceship that has failed. Every Russian launch, every American launch, not just space shuttles and Soyuz, I mean everything, every single space system failure. I read the whole book, page for page, cover to cover, loved it. And I mean, I have friends who are engineers and scientists. I mean, literally they think it's the craziest thing they ever saw. And then I hate Google Docs and I hate spreadsheets. So there's all the information.

Make of it what you will. Yeah, well, what I make of it, like if you go way upstream, is that you understand, like early days, you figured out the failure is part of the game. Most people hear that and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And at all costs, do whatever it takes to avoid it. And you said, okay, you heard the insight. This is just like when you read the book, The Long Tail. You heard the insight failure is part of the game. You said, well, shit, I'm going to get good at it. Let me go study other people that have failed. Let me figure

out what's coming down my lane. Let me see what I can avoid. But when failures do happen, how do they adjust? What do they learn? And it's not, so you've been a student of failure, which sounds counterintuitive, but actually is just like diving deep into any capacity that we want to, you know, accelerate. And so like, I'm listening, you're the first person that's ever gone this deep into failure. And I've heard thousands and thousands of people talk about the value fail fast, fail forward, fail often. And it's it is rhetoric. And it's not for you, though. It's super intimate. You know, so that's that's my takeaway on it. Yeah, I'm I am absolutely fascinated by it. I have a whole collection at home of instruction manuals and stuff like that from failed companies, from Enron to WorldCom to Studebaker. And what I always try and get is the, they had the money to print it.

They had the wherewithal to print it. But they'd be gone in five years or four years or two years or one year. I have this beautiful employee manual from Studebaker that didn't even get distributed because between printing they they ran out of money to pay the printing press and i and it's beautiful like no leather bound like triple stitched everything but it's not about their failure it's about their company it's the book that if you worked at studebaker oh god yeah yeah handbook okay it. I have the Enron employee handbook. And I have dozens and dozens of books like this from Polaroid, you name it. Just because I find it so interesting what this all looked like before it went away.

About how many employees do you have? Full-time and part-time combined uh just under 300 and then what is your guiding philosophy for how you lead manage you know guide your your folks you know it's evolved drastically star trek fan at all I mean, I've seen a bunch of TV stuff in the early days, but not lately. Tell me if this makes sense to you. If it doesn't, I can find a better way to say it. I was born and I came out here a Captain Kirk, and I would not be here today had I not started my career off as a Captain Kirk Kirk and I have evolved into a Captain Picard. Okay. Remind me Picard. Picard is Patrick Stewart. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a much calmer,

basically the main thing you got to know is in Captain Kirk would beam down to every planet with a phaser and shoot everything and, you know, be a cowboy. And Captain Picard, literally discussed in the first episode, never went down. He sent his crew. And I mean, basically, my philosophy is, I know what I'm very good at. And that's a very short list. And I know everything else to some degree, I am not good to horrible at. I have three people here that I am very lucky are here. They are great at everything. And I don't even hire employees anymore. I basically every now and then know we need to find someone to do something and they do it. I'm not good at picking employees.

And I didn't know that probably until about six years ago. And the way I found out was our turnover rate, you know, six years ago going backwards was probably about 23 months. The average employee only worked here about 23 months. And then at some point, I noticed it was three and a half years, four and a half years. Now the average employee has been here over seven years. And at some point, I realized I wasn't hiring people. And the less I had to deal with hiring, the happier people seemed to be. And, you know, the better stuff seemed to work. So I use that as an example to make a bigger point.

I know what I'm good at. I stick to it and aggressively avoid stuff I'm not. Okay. So in that manner of humility that you have, what are some of those crown jewels? What are some of those skills that are great assets for you? As a leader? Yeah. As a human, like you're, you know, that thought that I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at. So you've got some insight about how you work. Like, if we could just cut to the wick, what are some of the things that you are good at? I mean, I'd say it, the business equivalent of abuse.

I have had assistants be on phone calls, and I get off the call, and I'm checking emails, and they come into my office bawling their eyes out. And I'm like, well, what's wrong? And they're like, what do you mean what's wrong? checking emails and they come into my office bawling their eyes out. And I'm like, what's wrong? And they're like, what do you mean what's wrong? You were the one being yelled at. And I just, I know partly why I have the thick skin that I do. But part of me doesn't get it at all. So I have a staggering tolerance for abuse

and I don't mean like personal you know what I mean yeah so so you you got a thick skin where it brings other people to tears 20 years I've been doing this I think I've gone home early less than five times maybe three times and and come in late due to sadness less than five times maybe less than five times, maybe three times, and come in late due to sadness less than five times, maybe less than three times. And then the other thing is, and again, that I've had my whole life. I was born with that gift. What do you mean you were born with that gift?

I was always like that. Okay, so is there some genetic predisposition to the hardiness and emotional resiliency that maybe there is? We don't know what they are, but what were your parents like? How did they cultivate that or bring that out of you? You know, my parents were good people. They were not bad parents. But they were very, in particular, one of them, very, very loud. I don't want any of this to come off as having a bad childhood, because I had a

good childhood. I don't want any of this to come off as I had bad parents. I did not have bad parents, but I grew up in a fucking loud house, uh, that I thought was normal. Uh, because that, you know, that was how I grew up. I was an only child. So it was two verse one, uh, which I always knew was fucked up. But now that I have three kids, I realized it's even more fucked up than I thought it was, uh, while growing up. And,. And to be completely honest with you, I didn't even realize what that experience was growing up in a house like that until I was at a big company. And, you know, I was at a bunch of small companies before getting to a big company. And there was somebody at the big company, her name was Marisol, who basically explained to me, yeah, it's not that normal to be, you know, in a, you be less loud, the interesting thing was, as I became calmer, and as I became less of to be honest with you a fucking lunatic, I still had that toughness that growing up

the way I did, had built. So I may have had the best of all worlds. I was able to fix what needed to be fixed without losing the thing that would allow me to get through a very aggressive entrepreneurial path. Yeah, I hear that. Okay. And then drugs and alcohol for you? To be honest with you, I have consumed more weed in the last six months than the rest of my life combined times a billion. And the reason for that is it's legal now. And it was never legal before. So I never really did drugs in my life. Not because I had a problem with drugs. I never thought I always thought the laws about drugs were ridiculous, but they were the law. And I always strive to

be a law abiding citizen. So I never really did drugs. And I never really drank much. You know, in college, I was shit faced probably three nights a week for the first two years. And then I slowly, you know, stopped drinking that much. And I'd say by senior year, you know, I was probably drunk once a month. And, you know, now I probably am drunk maybe once or twice a year at the most. I probably have between zero and four drinks a month. Yeah, I never needed it, especially even during a time where I should probably not have been thrilled to have been me. I never had a problem being me, and I just never needed anything to deal with it. I want to get to the second asset that you have, but your, your insight and your ability to just transparently say the truth is, is wonderful. I don't know a better word. It's just, it really is refreshing.

You don't need to hide it. No, I know. You didn't need to hide it 10 years ago. You did or you did not. Maybe it's smart to hide it 10 years ago you did or you did not mark to hide it 10 years ago i don't know are you familiar with carol the guy writing all those books on lyndon johnson no uh some of the greatest books of all time there's four of them two of them have won the pulitzer uh and the other two won everything but the pulitzer. The four books combined, I think total about conservatively 5000 pages. But yeah, he came to an interesting conclusion with Lyndon Johnson, which was, he said, a lot of people think power corrupts. He's like, what I have learned is that power reveals.

And I'm not saying I'm a powerful person. I'm not. But I'm exponentially powerful today compared to who I was 20 years ago, let alone 10 years ago. So having this security, again, I see no reason to lie or avoid talking about any of this stuff. I see no downside to it. And the other thing is I see people all the time, especially politicians, lying for no reason. One of the reasons I can't stand Trump, I think Trump's horrible, yada, yada, yada. But one of the reasons I'm convinced Trump won is that he was just so honest. And like all these people who felt disenfranchised were like, you know what?

This guy's like pretty horrible. But I've never heard anyone talk like this. The other reason I think he won, by the way, related to our topic, he was very funny. And at least for those 16 Republicans he beat, not one of them had a sense of humor. That's for a different podcast. There you go. Bringing it home, right to your wheelhouse, honesty and funny. You've spent your life building a business to amplify people's sometimes brutal, but definitely honest humor. But the other thing to your point, just because I keep derailing myself and

you is basically, and this is not something I was born with at all. And it took a long time to figure out. But, you know, I in almost every relationship I have from my wife, to everybody here at the company, and to people I work with outside of the company, almost all of them. I trust their version of events in many ways more than my own. So if I'm sitting here with my head of operations and she tells me something that I think is absurd, wrong, dumb. I instinctively now know there is a 99 percent chance she's right and I'm wrong, even if I can't immediately figure it out. And that that took a long time. I've probably only been aware of this for five or six years at the most.

But it's it's a very valuable tool to have. And I would say. Two things about that, one is. It takes a lot for me to veto my staff, like I said, 99 out of 100 times, even if I disagree with them, I ignore my beliefs and follow their lead. If I do that 100 times, they were right at least 95, which means that in exchange for the 5% I'm losing, I'm getting a 95% better outcome. And the 1% of the time where I veto them, it is because I've determined if this is the one time I'm right and they're wrong, the catastrophe of that event will exceed the value of them being right. So that, like I said, I was not born with this knowledge to put it mildly yeah cool cool interesting insight like to second guess yourself because you hear a lot of folks that

are leading their people get frustrated because they're always second guess and you're saying i did that for a long time but now i'm really trusting people that work with me for their perspective. Well, I will say this, I will say this in my defense, uh, of my earlier self, I was definitely surrounded with not the best people. Oh yeah. There you go. A great example is, you know, it took Lincoln a long time to get the cabinet that he's famous for. Uh, the band of rivals, uh, was not there on day on day one. Some of them were, but not all. So it took me a long time to get the people that I have now. But now that they're here, thank God. Like I said, I can focus on what I do right. So Brian, on that note note you've worked with some of the most extraordinary talent and so if you

could sit down with one talent with somebody that is incredibly inspiring whether it's a comedian or you know Lyndon Johnson or somebody that you know you you've wanted to spend time with and you had one question for him what would you ask him anyone who's ever lived of any yep background yep for sure like it's really two-part like who is it and then what would you ask him well I know who it is I'm just trying to think what the question would be but it could only be one question the person is is President Grant. My first son is named after him. I guess the question would be, yeah, the question, I'm glad I spent a minute thinking about it. He knew exactly what to do in the war. What he did in the war had never been done before. It had never been written down. It had never been discussed. It wasn't taught

at West Point. It's directly connected for for better or worse, arguably worse, to how we fought in Iraq, 150 years later, or 100 years later, whatever. And he just knew it, just knew what to do. He was lucky. And obviously, Lincoln was lucky too. But he was lucky that Lincoln supported him long enough for it to be shown that it worked. But everybody, you know, Grant didn't become Grant until almost fourth, maybe the fifth. Everyone knows he was at the bottom of the class at West Point, but everybody forgets all the people before him were the top of the class and they all got fired. They all failed. All of them were ready to just let the South go. And just somehow, I have theories. I think I know what happened. But I'd love to ask him how he knew what to do when it was so hard to do. You know, he was a good man. You know, it wasn't easy for him to sit there at these battles, not only killing tens of thousands of people, but having tens of thousands of his own people. No, he was at these battles when he was a nobody from nowhere, having 20,000, 30,000 people die in 18 hours.

And if he was some psychopath, that would be one thing. But he was a good man. He'd be sitting there crying. Part of the reason he was drinking so much was because it did hurt him so much. But he kept doing it. He kept doing it. You know, he'd do it on a Monday, and then he'd do it again two weeks later. And, you know, that's what the outcome of that

is indubitably what stopped Hitler. It's indubitably, 20 years before that, what led to the UN. Two things that affect you and I and everybody on the planet today. And had he failed, this would be a completely different planet. And I just, the other thing about him, apropos everything we've been talking about, and Lyndon Johnson's the same way.

This is something that just mystifies me about people like this. They didn't read. Everything I've done has been based on reading. It's like an instruction manual to life. Grant didn't read and neither did Johnson. And it just amazes me that these guys could be so successful having not read about anybody before them. And maybe especially in Grant's case, that's why he was so successful. He wasn't biased by anything. But it's just, you know, it's I always say to really appreciate Monet. If you're not some full of shit person looking at a Monet being like, this is the greatest thing

I've ever seen. Because when I saw Monet for the first time, I'm like, this is boring. And I felt that way about Monet for a long time. And then I was telling like an art somebody who knew what they were talking about, about my feelings on Monet. And what that person said to me was, here's the thing you got to know about Monet. You got to look at art before Monet to appreciate Monet. The reason you find Monet boring is because you see what became of art after Monet, because they could all work off of Monet. And after I was told that, don't remember who told me, but I started looking at stuff vis-a-vis Monet's lifespan and when they did it.

And you can absolutely see Monet changed art forever. And it's the same thing with Grant. Literally, he was he was homeless. He literally was homeless the day the Civil War started. He was basically stealing fire. He was stealing wood and selling it on street corners to feed his family. And then the war started. And he was such a bad reputation. He couldn't even get a job for a while. It was luck that he got back in uniform. And then he changed the world forever and permanently. And in my opinion, in a good way. Oh, what a respectful take on, you know, a man that was influential in the civil war for sure. And obviously you've done your work there. And I'm also equally fascinated that you, the

question you'd want to ask him is at the center of where we started this podcast in this conversation that we never answered, which is like, how did you know to take action on that book? Where so many people read the book, like, and it is, I called it intuition. And then we just started rolling in the conversation. But so let me turn it on you a little bit. Like, how did you know to take action on that book? Well, just to really tie it all, all loose ends, all watch this. You're going to love this. I'm going to tie it all together. Remember a couple of minutes ago, I said to you, I want to know how Grant did it, but I had a theory. Maybe my own opinion of my own career is biased, my theory, but I bet you, we, I bet you you we have this in common. He had no choice. He was homeless, destitute,

and he had no choice. He was already at the bottom a human being could be. Why not? Like all the West Point leaders, all the Supreme Commanders failed because they had so much to lose. The prestige, the money, the power, everything. If they had 20,000 people die in 18 hours. So they'd rather lose the war than their prestige. Whereas here's Grant. Borderline homeless failed at everything he did his whole life, failure. Yes, he felt bad, but his job was to win battles. Then it was his

job to win the war. And by the way, by the time he won the war, again, he was the right person to handle the victory correctly, which everybody knows the respect he showed Lee and all that stuff. And it was the same thing for me, albeit without the bullets and blood and horror. I just, right or wrong, by the way, again, back to Grant, he had a choice. He didn't have to conclude that he had no choice. But I came to the same conclusion. I had no choice. I had, for whatever reason, this was it. My attempt at freedom, my attempt to do what I wanted to do, to green light, to be able to green light. I mean, I've only been able to green light in a real way for about two years, maybe less. That's freedom. You know, the head of Warner Brothers can green light, but A, it's not her company.

B, that power began accumulating 100 years ago. So within my own lifetime, in a much smaller way, in a much smaller bank line than the woman who runs Warner Brothers at this moment, I had the ability to green light that which excites me. And to have that freedom 12, 13, 14 years ago, whatever, I had to do what I did to get here. I love it. And you've got a, in your bio, you've got a quote that really sparked a deep interest for me to want to, you know, beyond everything you've already built, but this little extra spark and it's almost like a throwaway comment, which is where this is your words, wherever we need to be tomorrow, we go there today. Yeah. You've been living that

philosophy for a long time. You know, the ability to see what is required for tomorrow and to be about it now. That's one way, that's one way to conclude it. But another way to look at it is part of the reason we have had so many failures, uh, is because of that philosophy. I'm not a genius in that there were a thousand roads to take and I picked the right one. There were a thousand roads to take. I could afford to take 200. I took 200. Luckily, the other 800 were not the right road. And of the 200 we took, you know, I found the two that were the best forward so that that is why there's been so much failure that's how i view that yeah okay cool and when i said that yeah you know it's it's funny for taking it the way you did i'm sure most people do

yeah no i was thinking when i said it yeah i feel you on that and you know the everything that you've talked about the deep research and respect you have for failure and all couched in an optimistic view, you know, like it's super. I think that that texture is that dynamic texture is really important. OK, last question. I've loved this conversation. I want to thank you in advance for it. Yeah, no, this is great.

But last kind of. Yeah, thank you. Last cool question for me is like, how do you define or articulate or even think about the concept of mastery? I think mastering is the ability to do something better than anybody else and have it be perceived as effortless. Cool. Very cool. Okay, brother. I appreciate you, Brian. Like your take on how and the tone of, you know, explaining your life events is really cool. And so I just want

to say thank you. And it's evident to me why you and comedy dynamics is working and flourishing. So I wish you the best on your sleep. Let me, let me turn the mirror at you for a second. I do a fair amount of interviews these days. I mean, these are some of the best questions I've ever been asked. I basically get asked same eight to 10 to eight to 12 questions over and over again. And that's fine. It is what it is. No problem with that. It's always been like that. But this I do not usually talk this much. So

you're a hell of an interviewer. I appreciate that. And, you know, I wonder it's because, you know, maybe maybe those eight or 12 are the right questions. And like you, I didn't have a choice because I didn't I didn't completely know about those eight or 12 were the right questions. And like you, I didn't have a choice because I didn't, I didn't completely know about those eight to 12, but you just kept dropping like really powerful insights and gems that the bread trail was there. I just followed what you, what, what you're dropping. So yeah, thank you for the compliment, not lost on me. And, um, I'm super stoked to follow what you're building and you know folks that want to follow along where's the best place that they can track you it's Instagram you know I kind of treat it like a visual diary that's yeah I you know I don't tweet I'm on Facebook but it's basically

just synced up to my Instagram account so I'd say Instagram and it's under my name. So not too far behind. Yeah, perfect. We'll put all that in the show notes and everything. So again, thank you. Appreciate it. And keep kicking ass, dude. World needs people like you.

You're very kind and thank you. All right. Take care. Okay. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

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