Going Deep with Chad and JT - EP 308 - Alex Hormozi

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Today we are joined by the legend Alex Hormozi! He is an entrepreneur who has had amazing success in content creation the last 26 months. Originally he started as a management consultant in the public sector then left that career to pursue a career in fitness starting his first gym at age 23. He scaled his small gym chain from 0 to 6 locations in three years.He started Acquisition.com as a holding company for private investments. The private equity firm focuses on making minority investments into cash flow positive growing founder owned businesses.He wants to make business accessible for EVERYONE!  Find out more about Alex here:https://www.acquisition.com/ Come see us on Tour!Tickets on http://www.chadandjt.com Call us, leave a 60 sec voicemail with your issue or question: 323-418-2019or write in to chadgoesdeeppodccast(at)gmail.com Check out the reddit for some dank convo: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChadGoesDeep/ Episode Sponsered by:Marine Layer Clothing:  Find your new favorite fits and get 15% off @marinelayer with promo code GODEEP15 at https://www.marinelayer.com/GODEEP15. #marinelayerpodBlueChew: Get your first month FOR FREE  just pay the 5$ shippinghttps://www.bluechew.com Code godeepHelix Sleep: 25% off  all mattress orders +2 free pillows https://www.helixsleep.com/godeep  Code HELIXPARTNER25 Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/philip-anderson/achievementLicense code: PQVSJOVUJXM9JXSZ

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our whole media team says like max stuff oh really like as a result of us or just peers oh we gotta talk about let's get it on the pod oh we're rolling oh cool sorry i really want people to know that oh yeah no for sure no i saw that that's sick yeah i saw that clip where you were like town hall i know you guys do a bunch of clips at town is it town hall yeah that's great city council yeah and um we were just talking about how like the stoke was dying down in the community and like there needed to be opportunities for max stoke yeah and um i told caleb my director of brand i was like dude we need more stoke because i think the stoke is always dying down in a way it's like our human condition to believe that it used to be higher or could be higher in the future but i think that's almost valuable right to like believe that it will go

higher at all times it's hope it's hope yeah we're chasing um peak stoke but like you know froth can only stay frothy so long the moment you stop frothing it like the bubbles froth's a little more ephemeral while stoke is always there we just got to reach it's an ideal that we always strive for but never achieve it's like we kind of took it from harvey milk because in the movie milk at least he says you got to give them hope it's like the last thing that comes out of the box pandora and that's what we think was stoked is like you got to give them stoke but it's not like ever going to be top top you're trying to get there yeah it's not it is mean, it's the ideal. It's the top of the mountain. What gets you stoked? Hard things worth doing.

Whoa, dude, you are such a lucid speaker. It's crazy. Is that something you practice or is the brain just a clear highway? No traffic. Yeah. How do you keep it free of traffic, dude? I actually think it's super well lubricated. Oh, nice. Yeah. More than there's good infrastructure lubricated. Oh, nice.

Yeah, more than there's... Good infrastructure. Yeah, right. Yeah, good guardrails. No, I took... I spent like... I had like a rocky cut scene of life that was like five years of me taking 20 plus one-on-one consults a day

selling gym memberships. And so like I had to talk to everyone like all the time every day. And so like, I had to talk to everyone like all the time, every day. And so like, I think you just learn how to say stuff better. So people would just come into your gym and it was just you convincing them to get a membership and you just got so good at giving them the pitch that it just carried over into all your thinking. Yeah. And then just like, I mean, I'm sure like I've gotten better because like the topics have gotten wider than just like, so what brings you in today?

Would you have so far? How'd you try that? How'd that work for you? What'd you like about it? You go through the same scripting over and over again. But the first five minutes, it goes from Mike the cop to Lupita the house cleaner to- All different people. It is absolutely the masses.

You know what I mean? I got to talk to every walk of earth. And a lot of us are in these bubbles, like friend groups or whatever communities. We talked about Vanderbilt for a second. Yeah. Going from like the white collar world of Vanderbilt and then like a management consulting career

to haggling over a $99 a month bootcamp membership was like, it was both humbling, but also just like eyeopening in terms of like how little I knew about like the world and other people and et cetera. And was your gym, it wasn't like a bougie one, right? Like it was like, like price point wise, it had a wide demo. Yeah. Totally. Because it was a service facility. So like, even though it was 99 and then eventually like 150 a month, um, it was, it was service-based. So it wasn't like you're like, you wouldn't compare

it to like an la fitness because they would have 100 times more equipment and showers and all this stuff i didn't have any of that stuff i just had like me and i was going to train people together oh okay i did group training it was like oh nice yeah and how'd you come up with like the workout methodology that you used um i did the stuff that they wanted to do like i didn't i didn't train them the way i trained because they didn't want to look like me. So I trained them the way- They didn't want to be jacked? I know.

Actually, I'll tell you a funny story. I had a guy come in- Yeah, dude, who are these people? They sound cool, but what's up? I had a dude come in once and he just started off the conversation. He's like, hey, to be clear, he's like, I never want to look like you.

I was like, yeah. And so like naturally, I've got like ego, you know what I mean? And then I've got like close the sale and so like naturally as you know like i've got like ego you know what i mean and then i've got like closed the sale um and just like take it and so i went with ego um how did you resist the urge to like grapple him oh what i did i went with the ego response and i was like don't worry you never will um and then i took a step back and i was like no because like you don't overnight just like sneeze and become jacked i like, there's like a hundred thousand days between where you are and where I am. And you can just like stop. And I'm measuring you right now and you don't have the determination to get

there. I've weighed and measured you and there's no way that you're sufficient. Were you naturally a people person before you got into entrepreneurship? I think so. Or did you develop that skill? I think so. Yeah. I was, I was fraternity president when I was- I was so yeah yeah i was i was fraternity president when i was gonna ask if you're a fraternity president i swear to god yeah i was which was it a tough election pike you're a dude i'm a pike no way yeah santa clara all right now it was uh it was it was a runaway election it was a landslide did you feel bad for the other guy no one guy only one guy ran against me and like when we did the voting he went to the other room and he just

like shook my hand and was like you're gonna get it i just promised myself that i would run no matter what oh respect and yeah i was like dope he ended up becoming vp so it was like all good good vp too he wasn't like you know yeah trying to upstage trying to betray you trying to organize a coup right no he was uh he was a good trip from pismo to cabo no i had because some of the older classmen because like the older guys also want to make sure the house is in good hands with and so they start like thinking like hey like have you thought about you know right and like i hadn't thought about until one of the older guys was like you should totally run i was like that's the best they asked you to do it to leave that's nice it worked out but it's funny because

a lot of the especially in like the internet world anybody who is not in that world which is most people um assume that it's like chief partier. And it's like not that. Because you like the guy that has to be able to be respected enough when he says like, I'm pulling away the punch bowl, like the cops are here. Or the guy who has to talk to the cops or like when a girl goes to the hospital because she like drank too much. you like drank too much. Like you want that guy who's going to have the conversation

who's going to like, you know, negotiate on your behalf with Vanderbilt with like how much trouble you're going to be in because you brought liquor on campus

and you're not supposed to. Just like the hard conversations and that you want somebody who's going to do that. So in some ways it's like, it's you get the prestige because of the title, but the actual day-to-day

is like, do we have enough cups? Do we have ice? Do we have speakers? Like where's the, where's the musician? Outside people underestimate that in like bro hierarchy that they think the top bro is the one who parties the most or gets laid the most but it's actually the person who can do those things but you still respect them ethically you know that they'll do

the right thing when it comes down to a party enabler long term so it's like long-term partying is all i was maximizing for i even had this thing i gave I D I give this like presentation on fratonomics to our, our fraternity as an argument, because it was really interesting. It was actually a huge, um, I got so much like life experience from this because I had to get a hundred dudes in college to do stuff they didn't want to do with no hard authority.

Like I couldn't like, there wasn't like punishment, you know what I mean? And so, and they're also like friends of mine. So it was like, how do I, you know,

how do I get them to do community service? because we have to do a certain amount of hours they have to show up to the events and like like one of the things was we were notorious like our house was notorious for showing up really late and partying really late and i was trying to explain to them i was like guys if we if we all show up earlier to the parties i was like our parties aren't going to be like twice as big i was like they'll be like five times as big and that's when i explained fratonomics. I was like, so if people are, you know,

like girls are walking on the, the, you know, the frat row or whatever, and they see all these parties. Well, if it's like 1030 or 11, that's like when people start walking to parties and you're going to look and

you're gonna see where the line is. Yeah. Be like where the line is, is where it's probably happening. If it's, there's no line, there's no real party. And so we're all getting there really late,

but the guys who got a little bit earlier get the snowball effect. So then they're all there, a line starts earlier, then more people go to the fraternity and then it just starts compounding. Right. And so I was like, we're not going to have twice as, but we'll have five times. People love spectacle. Oh yeah. White noise. I negotiated a merger between our fraternity and another fraternity.

Oh wow. Was it a hostile takeover or leveraged buyout? Kind of. It was a hostile takeover. Let's go. So we got kicked off campus for whatever. Yeah. And so we lost our house. Wait, what's whatever?

What was whatever? We got, oh, actually it was- Hazing, bro. It was a legitimate- It's always a haze thing. It wasn't actually. So we had apparently like 20 generations earlier taken a loan from the institution to, to totally frat

out the house. But then we had never repaid the loan because whoever took out the loan was 20 alumni ago and had graduated and it didn't care. And so then the, the university, we had no interest payments and then just called the loan due. And so we would have had to pay all of us out of pocket for a house we didn't own but the but the but the university did so like we took a loan to improve the real estate that the university owned but then they called us 20 generations later for the it was basically like all the houses had loans they chose to call ours because they wanted us off campus yeah that was like what they had other reasons but that was then they caught that was what they caught yeah we we got caught for uh for it's like uh al pacino with like male fraud or something like that was the male fraud for us um

so we got kicked off campus and so that obviously is like a death you know like because everybody's on campus is going to have yeah best access to talent it's everything and so there was this other fraternity that was like dying but they had a really sick house, but like no bros. And I was like, dude, we have bros, but no house. And I was like,

I feel like we could figure something out. And so their big concern, and they were actually pretty okay with it because we had a ton of girl. We had like a lot of good rep for that kind of stuff. We had some cachet. Yeah, we had some cachet.

That's sick. And, but they were like, hey, and they were a Southern fraternity and we were like a Northern fraternity. So they were like, what about the clash? Like, like literally some of the, like the negotiations were like, how much country is going to be played versus like how much house music. And we had to go like, we had to like go like term by term. Right. And so I was explaining to them, cause some of their older guys were like, I don't want to change anything. And I was like, listen, we pull from different girl pools. Like you pull Southern girls. I was like, we pull Northern

girls. I was like, so there's no overlap. We're just going to have bigger, better parties and a more diverse crowd. You're going to see chicks you've never seen before. We're going to see chicks we've never seen before. And so the final term of the negotiation was how do voting rights work? Because everything gets voted on. And they were like, cause you guys have like a hundred, 120 guys. And they were like 30 guys. So we basically came up with the three-fifths compromise um just yeah just like just like you know back in the day um like the forefathers and so that's actually what we worked on uh and so like every pike vote was worth one quarter um of every one of their votes that makes sense too yeah and so but the problem was that influence doesn't work

that way if three quarters the guys want to do one thing and a quarter of the guys don't, like the peer pressure is just insurmountable. Right. And so we ended up being able to, that's where like the hostile component came over. You got most of your like agenda across. Yeah. So then as soon as we did get, as soon as we infiltrated and merged, we became one. When you're playing chess like that, do you know it's going to work out that way?

Or are you just playing one move at a time and hoping that if you do your Best on that move it'll work out the way you want I Take all the all the all the plays from the last thing that I want to have happen and try and work backwards hmm, we explain that so like this this cross is like even like business stuff or whatever, but if I'm if like Decisions become more complex when you're trying to serve more than one master. And so if we're trying to get something to happen, then it's like, I don't want to also say, well, I also want the, I also want a house that has

great chicks. I also want a house that it's like, I needed to keep our house on campus. That was the goal. And so everything back down to, okay, of all the different places that I could do a deal, which one's most likely that would accept a deal. Okay deal okay well where do we have the most leverage okay well you know and then it's like and it's like okay this is the highest likelihood target that we that i could go after and then it just clearly step by step from there yeah because at the end of the day they had the most leverage because they had the place they had the house but i had bros yeah you have bros yeah but you guys were Ronins. Yeah, we were nomads at the time. You guys were masterless, dude.

We were bromads. Is there a legendary lore about your parties? Yeah. At Vandy? Yeah. We had a Catalina wine mixer and I got an ice helicopter on the front yard. Wow.

Everyone, like some of the seniors were like, you spent $1,000 on this? I was like, I know. I only spent $1,000 on this. Can you imagine? But the Fratonomics just took over because they quickly saw the line out. Because as soon as you see a half to scale ice sculptor of a helicopter, you know they mean business.

Is there the Alex Hormozy book of fratonomics at Vanderbilt? There are some moves that have been patented and trademarked. I came back to campus five years later and I was in a cafeteria and two freshmen I didn't know were in front of me and I couldn't make this up. And they check out. And as I check out after them, I go to like the ketchup and whatever station. And one guy turns to the other and says, dude, I just pulled a hormosy. Really? Because he stole a chicken breast. And so the way that, back in the day, you'd put a chicken breast underneath your salad and then you could also have a chicken breast on the side. So you could get two chicken breasts, but you'd have one meal credit. So like you couldn't have more than one. You'd have to pay extra.

So I put one under my salad and that way I could get it through. That's cool on two levels because it's also a healthy meal. Like you're focused on just trying to get more jacked and more clean. Were you as jacked in college as you are now? As shredded, not as jacked. Smart. Yeah. That's awesome.

I was lighter. I hadn't come into my man body yet. Yeah. But the administration started catching on to this. So they started like asking people to push their salad aside to show that there was nothing underneath. They got into it. But we stayed, we, the royal we stayed, you know, a step ahead.

And so i started getting newspapers because they had newspapers in the cafeteria and so i'd have my plate and i would have a newspaper like this but then i threw chicken breast and then i could put like two or three chicken breasts lining the inside of the newspaper but now you're getting pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered i mean at what point are you like i'm i'm taking too much chicken i felt like it was kind of like how l Lohan approached that issue in Mean Girls. Like the limit does not exist. Oh.

Yeah. I felt like you have said that. No. That's the first time? Natty. Bro, you pulled it. That's sick. Is there such a thing as too much protein?

That's a good question. Spiritually or? No, like metabolically. For what outcome? like you get as much protein as you want it's just like how much of it is going to be like used to gain muscle like you max out from that perspective that's pretty well studied like if you eat like more protein gets you more muscle until it doesn't anymore right and so then after that point it's just calories the same as a carb would be there's like an asymptote right and everyone's different right like I was and I don't know anything but I've always felt like diet like me neither every person's different right like there might be more there might not

be one diet that fits everyone there's an ideal diet for every person but it might not be an ideal diet for sure all people so how do you find out what's the ideal diet for you the thing you can stick to right so it's just about that's like real function yeah like if because i i mean mind you i had a lot of weight loss and fitness conversations in my life but like i would have this talk a lot and i had to have this talk with my trainers too because they would want to you know a power lifter wants to train everybody like a power lifter bodybuilders want to train everybody like bodybuilders kettlebell girls want to train everybody like kettlebell girls whatever i was like if we get these people in

shape for six months of their entire life and then they go back i was like what did we accomplish nothing i was like if we get everyone to walk 10 minutes a day for the rest of their lives i was like we won because like you can add 10 years of someone's life by just getting them to walk for 10 minutes a day like that's how little it takes and so it's way more about at least in my perspective of like if you can't do it forever don't do it for a day kind of thing. Because you're going to stop eventually. Like if you're going to stop eventually, why start? So I want to think like how little do I need to do that I will actually be able to persist to do that I will get the most from for the least amount of work.

I found that with diets because I've dabbled in, I did keto, I did carnivore for like two weeks, but I made the mistake of eating in and out patties. So we were like shooting the video and I was like sick. He was a little tired that day. He has max energy most days. And that day I was like, you might need some broccoli dog. Have a Flintstone. Well,

I was like, cause I watched this guy's like, doesn't matter where it comes from. Just as long as it's meat. Yeah. Which, but then I found that just high quality food is the best because you felt better maintain that yeah yeah and you know what actually that was like the best shape i had been in it's just high quality food consistently

and then not even working out too hard like i would just you know go max effort and then just not even working out too hard just like kind of listen to your body i think yeah whatever you stick with what kind of like are you doing like hypertrophy what's your like yeah that's your main thing yeah i just i just strength train because that's what i like what's your rep target it's more um it's more of a i mean it's a range you know what i mean depends on the exercise depends on the exercise i'm talking the main ones the compound lifts even then depends so you'll do 20 reps on squat? I don't squat, but for like leg lifts, for sure.

Is it because you just don't want disc degeneration? So barbell lifts, like for the whole concept of like doing it for everything, like you don't see many 80 year olds barbell squatting. And so I just see that as like most people can't mechanically do it for a long enough period of time. It's a shame. I'm about to give it up right now. I'm sad to move over to like the leg press,

but I'm doing Pilates, which is great for the lower half. I haven't done barbell lifts in years. How are your trunks? You big? They're solid. Yeah, those calves are nice. Oh yeah.

I can show quads later. How do you keep the legs big when you're not hitting the squats and the deadlifts? You can get them bigger without doing that. No way, bro. 100%. Dude, come on, how?

100%. Well, tell us. Well, think about the limiting factor. Unless it's like proprietary. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, it is, but. 100%. Dude, come on, how? 100%. Well, tell us. Well, think about the limiting factor. Unless it's like proprietary and you can't give it away. No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, it is, but. But you'll give it away?

Yeah. All right, we'll put this one behind a paywall. Yeah, good call, sucks. Just make sure, now we're switching to OnlyFans. OnlyGains, anyways, so. So if you think about the limiting, so you want the muscle that you're trying to train to be the mechanical limiter of the lift, right?

So that that's the one that actually goes to true failure in order to be free to stop doing the reps. If you're squatting, most times when you fail squatting, you fall forward, right? The bark, like if you actually go to failure, you fall forward and it's because your core gives out before your legs do. Like if you can leg press a thousand pounds, if your body were perfectly rigid, you'd be able to squat a thousand pounds. And so the best squatters have cores, core strength that are just like out of this world. They've turtle shell abs out to here. And it actually doesn't even look that good

because they have so much hypertrophy in the literal sense of their abs that it almost looks like it's called a power gut. It's like you have this really strong gut. Which I think a lot of people maybe then misinterpret as being a result of HGH or some kind of supplementation. Yeah, I'm sure some people do. But oftentimes that's just from what you're saying,

just training. But I'm sorry, I knocked you off, keep going. No, you're saying. Just being strong as hell. Just training. But I'm sorry I knocked you off. Keep going. No, you're good. And so like, you know, same thing with like deadlifts. It's like, well, if you want to be a great deadlifter, then deadlift. If you want to be a great squatter, then squat. If you want big legs, then you need to take your legs to absolute failure.

And so you basically want moves that isolate everything else except for the thing that you have that you can just absolutely take it to near death. And so that's like hack squats come into place where you have full range of motion on the joint that you're trying to work. Like you can hit, like with a hack squat, you can go all the way ass to grass or hamstrings to calves and go full stretch, full squeeze. And you think that's best? Ass to grass? For in a hack squat, because of the way that a well-designed hack squat will allow you to do that with limited mobility. Like most people don't even have the mobility to deadlift properly without rounding their backs. How do you feel about the hex bar?

So more people have the mobility to do a trap bar deadlift than a straight bar deadlift. And so what ends up happening with that is that like a trap bar deadlift is a great overall body lift because like it works your grip, it works your back, it works your traps, it works your glutes, it works everything. And there's nothing, again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying if you're going to train, if your goal is like, I want to train this muscle, then I want to have the exercise that is going to get me the fullest range of motion on the joint that I can do the most volume on, that I can load in a way that's incremental, that is safe for everything else that I do. And so if I, if I check all those boxes and that's pretty much how I look at the exercises

that I select, they're ones that I know that I can do a ton of volume on without hurting my joints. Cause like at a certain, like I'm almost 20 years into training, like competitively or at like a real training level. And so it's not even like I can squat right now, but I can't hit the same volume on squats as I can on banded leg press or hack squats, or, you know, a Smith press, you know, whatever. Lunges? Lunges are brutal, but yes. You throw those in?

I would, I would, so with lunges, I would probably do like a Bulgarian split squat if I wanted to like isolate glutes. So you'll throw a foot up on the bench and come forward like that? Yeah, because then your glute is the mechanical- You get the focus. So you're really trying to maximize the focus on it. forward like that. Yeah. Cause then your glute is the, is the mechanical. You get the focus. So you're really trying to maximize the focus on it.

And so with compound lifts, do you almost avoid those? Cause you want to focus so much. Like a hack squat is still a compound lift. Right. Like it's still a multi-joint movement. But it's just offering a bit more focus and a bit more sustainability. You get stability on the things that are not core to the lift so that they

don't become limiters. Right. Again, my hip flexors will get in the way of my squats. Totally. It's like, that sucks. Yeah. So you have mobility limiters and then you just have't become limiters. Right. Again, if you want- Yeah, because my hip flexors will get in the way of my squats. Totally.

It's like, that sucks. Yeah. So you have mobility limiters, and then you just have strength limiters. So your core might be a strength limiter for squat. You might also have hip flexibility limitations on the movement. So you actually can't even do it properly

to feel the muscle that you want to, because your mobility won't allow you to get the muscle in the position that it would be the limiter. When you were starting out in entrepreneurship, like entrepreneurship like deep this is the most i've talked about fitness in probably like seven years good like legit no like caleb's like i have not been asked about fitness like seven years good i'm glad all right yeah i think i am glad yeah when you were like starting an entrepreneurship like deep into lifting as much as you are now

were you able to maintain that lift yeah I've lifted pretty much the whole time. Yeah. Do you lift with bros? I go bro-low for the most time. Sorry, is that a single bro or no bro? I'm the solo bro. Oh, I thought you said bro-low. I am bro-low.

I lift bro-low. I think you're thinking like low bro, but he's solo bro. Yeah. Oh. Like solo bro-low is me low is me copy yeah I should have known that no it's all good it's all good and I'm jay cut that don't keep it because people might be confused yeah they might not know they might not know it's good if I'm vulnerable yeah it's good it's authentic yeah no it's it's so I prefer to train with training partners. I just happen to train

Brolo for the most part. Same, but it's hard to hit those same... You're going to push yourself harder if you have some friends with you, especially if they're stronger than you. Totally. And I have trouble. I work out by myself. Typically, at the end of the day, I'm very tired. I don't go to failure on every set because I don't have the horsepower internally to get there. But I know if my dogs

were there, I'd probably hit it. But then i might get hurt too i mean there's a downside to it as well and that's where that's where i think the exercise selection is so like key with that stuff like it's really tough to get i mean you can get hurt on a hack squat but it's like a lot less likely like you can't take squats to failure there's fundamentally you can't do it because you just like it's massively risky to take squats like barbell squats but taking a hat squat to failure fine you know what i mean yeah when you watch football players hitting their max in college they've got 20 guys around them there's like three guys watching everything shaking it's a big event you can't just do that in your garage no and to be that's how my friend

teddy stop being teddy yes but but like then, like from a hypertrophy perspective, everything comes down to just volume times intensity. And so those kinds of lifts, if you like get super jacked up and do that thing, like you end up having more central nervous fatigue. So that actually impacts your future volume and intensity for the rest of the week. And so there's a trade-off that happens

where like it makes sense to do those lifts if you're getting close to a competition or you need to have a peak event of some sort. Yeah, you need max performance. Right. But for the most part, you're really just trying to accumulate volume and fatigue on the muscle so that you adapt to it so do you think guys who get super hyped up before a set are actually doing themselves kind of a physical disservice because that's just more like pump but it's not really helping their body it's about how much you not to give you like really willy-nilly answers here but like if you do it every once in a while then it's like then it can serve you it's about how much you, not to give you like really willy nilly answers here, but like,

if you do it every once in a while, then it's like, then it can serve you. It's just like intensity techniques. Like if you do drop sets or you do one and a half reps or you do slow eccentrics or anything like that, like make a set more intense. You can do that. If you do it on every set, then you'll end up fatiguing in the wrong way. Right. What's your favorite thing to talk about? i almost exclusively talk about making money in business which is great i i'm i'm loving this so like this is this is like a breath of fresh air so i'm i'm right i was wondering i was like well is he tired of talking about weightlifting or this is more of like a detour for you this is fun this is a side

quest oh but like a worthwhile side quest do you believe in cheat days um i believe in cheat life cheat life what does that mean so i just want to so like i eat pretty much fruit meat and dessert nice animal based it that works for me so i just get all my protein in really easily before i go to dinner and then when i go to dinner i eat whatever you don't know i mean and that way so basically i just back in from so all the people that i know have been incredibly fit for a very long time have a much more simplified version of how they stay fit because anybody who's like adhering to any kind of strict anything they're not going to do until they're 80 so like don't care are you friends with any fat people um well they're friends with me uh right and you don't say anything but there's a

you harbor just some detachment no not at. Because you know you can't count on them if a fire starts. No, I'm being ridiculous. No, of course not. I'm sorry. No, of course I do. What people choose to do with their bodies is their choice. But as far as I'm concerned from the food perspective, I know what my calorie intake needs to be.

And I've been, you know, I counted calories for years of my life to the point now, like I know what's in everything, ballpark enough. And since I also don't have a tremendous amount of food variety, um, I know what all my meals are. And so like the easiest hack in the world for anyone who's trying to like get back in shape is like most humans, 90% of their meals are the same 10 meals. Like if you think back over the last week, you probably have the same, like two or three things you rotate for dinner, two or three things you rotate for lunch, and maybe two or three things you rotate for breakfast, if that. And so if you want to change your entire life, all you have to do is just change what those 10 meals are. It makes it way

easier for people to like, you don't have to change everything. It's like, you just need to find like two or three breakfasts that you like that actually help you rather than hurt you or whatever. And so, and so for me, I have the same breakfast and the same lunch every day. And then that knocks out almost all my protein macros for the day. And then when I go to dinner, because that's when I usually have social things, business dinners, whatever, I can be way more flexed. And I just know what my rough calorie intake is. So I can have dessert, I can have drinks, I can do whatever. And so like I've drank for almost the entirety of being shredded and jacked. I've, I basically stopped drinking for

like three years just because the business was like blowing up and i i was like i'm not going to be the reason something gets fucked up right um but since then i you know i've been drinking the last four years um and i drank for my whole life before that from the time i was a toddler uh and i was shredded the whole time meaning if you just get the if you just know at the end of the day it's just again this is apparently controversial which is ridiculous but like you burn a certain amount of calories you take in a certain amount of calories the difference is what you gain or you lose right so was the choice to keep your dinner option to keep your dinner open diet wise also to optimize business because the social aspect would be better i think just optimize life right you need to have

some fun yeah and just like not be the guy who's going to bring tupperware or be a pain in the because that can kill the vibe. Yeah, the stoke would definitely be diminished. And then when you're drinking, like, are you able to, do you ever like just let loose? Yeah. Like, like, loose, loose? On special occasions. Yeah? Yeah.

How many times per year? Once. Once a year? Maybe twice. How do you, do you know the day is coming or is it a surprise you? I can feel it. Yeah, you're just halfway through the day and you're like, I think I'm getting fucked up today. Oh, no, I think it's before I even start cheering.

I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get fucked up. You can feel that burning. The demon needs to come out. So you don't put that in your schedule? The demon coming out? You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like this is demon day? So my birthday, my birthday corresponded with the book launch that I just did.

And so like after the book launch was over, the team came and I was like, there's a time for work and there's a time for play. I was like, it is now a time for play. And like Layla came to pick me up from the pool cabana like six hours later. And she was like, I knew. Yeah, do you just finish the book, bro?

You get to rage. Yeah. That's been true throughout all of history. Yeah. I mean, even BC, like 2000 BC, like Seneca was shotgunning yeah all the greeks dude when they finished one of them plays they were like bring on the wine yeah suckling from the epictetus for sure yeah so fog please he got after it dude yeah are you a big uh do you like

literature a lot do you read a lot not a ton what do you read not a ton oh that's interesting so how do you get information mostly from communication uh like how'd you learn about business just through doing doing for the most part honestly so you don't read like barbarians at the gates or shoe dog or any of that stuff not a ton leila does more reading than than i do and then she just like tells me what you read i'm like that's good it's through osmosis you pick it up from the people around you that's smart i do so my learning so everyone learns differently but for me when i want to like go into a new category or learn about something, I'll usually read a ton of books on a very narrow topic. So like, it's really unlikely for me to read a big mass market book, but like when we started getting into like doing deals with acquisition.com, I read like eight books on deal making in a week.

And then I called everybody I knew who does deals for a living and is an investor. And I just asked every question I could possibly think of, and then compiled all their answers with all the notes i have in the book and then had some sort of working thesis of like okay i think this is what i want to do was the book helpful or was it more just the that you put in the effort to read the book that you think kind of fortified you in the deal making no the books were helpful oh so they do work yeah okay i think books definitely work i i've heard you talk about before that that you view because i feel like a lot of people though that they though, they have these motivational things where it's like, you've got to read a book a week or whatever.

And you're like, that's just an excuse. That's just like a waste of time. Well, if you boil everything down to brass tacks, it's like you need to do the things that will make you successful. And the book is not one of those things. Be the person that someone writes the book about. Sure. I mean, that's like Benjamin Franklin said,

to be remembered you either have to do something that people write books about or write books worth reading like this is the only thing that can like live on um but for for for my perspective uh totally lost my train of thought i was gonna ask if you ever wrestled a book because i lost my train of thought okay perfect have i wrestled one i don't know dude my brain went scrammy no dude i'm right there with you i think we hit a natural kind of yeah time to set up again yeah just chill recalibrate figure it out yeah we had a refraction period that happened i yeah i feel like all three of our brains were just on a collision course and

it just hit you know fusion but yeah new energy yeah what do we i mean where do we go from here that's crazy i don't know and i know like we got our hands on the wheel, but I feel like it's just, yeah. If Jesus take over, how do we, how do we turn Stoke into a business? Is Stoke a brand?

Oh, Stoke is a brand. Right. Is for fucking sure. Yes. Like a brand. And so I think, can we call it something else or does it have to be a brand?

And I love Stoke as a brand. Okay. But if Stoke feels like it can't be a brand, right? Why wouldn't it be? I know, because then I guess I'm wary of commodifying it, but we have to because I want to have a good life. So I think, so the Stoke is an ideal, right? And so like Nike is victory. It's an ideal that everyone strives toward.

And so Stoke is also an ideal, different. And to build Stoke, you associate Stoke with as many Stoke-like things that you guys determine it is. And so the more associations you say like, you see like this epic wave and you're like, that's Stoke. For sure. And then everyone's like. I'll co-sign a wave. They're like, yeah, of course. Right.

Hancock all over it. And you're like okay that is stoke and people like oh so epic wave stoke to charge five bucks to ride the wave no what you do is you basically show pictures and have discussions about stoke next to and about things that you agree on that you co-sign are also stoke that you just be like if stoke were a bucket of ideas you'd be like that's like you know uh what's the shoot it was like the the wilderberries traveling wilderberry no there was a there's the um okay so there was this band and they had like an in crew and they called them

tom petty you're talking about the super group no there's uh it's basically just call it cool kids right and so it's uh it's like if you were to say like what about sarah is she a cool kid you're like nah she's not a cool kid right and you're like what about john is like definitely a cool kid whatever that is it's like you basically do that yes or no hot or not but for a brand so there's way more things that would be not stoke than stoke yeah you have to be selective of course otherwise then it's everything because i gotta hurt people's feelings but hey there's we got to protect it it's up here it's an ideal right and so basically once you make enough associations of stoke with other stoke like things then eventually stoke in and of itself everyone

will have a shared context of what stoke means and what it means to them and then you say this t-shirt is stoke because now you've associated the wave and other epic things with this icon this brand this logo ideal. And then you put it on a white t-shirt and it goes from being a $5 t-shirt to a $500 t-shirt. Because if you think like Louis Vuitton t-shirt versus Old Navy t-shirt, same t-shirt, different logo. The meaning, the perception of the meaning. So if you think about what brand is, I'm going to get a little on this. So if you go back to what brand originally was, brand was like what you seared

onto a cattle, right? It was a brand. And so if you have two cows and one of them has a brand and the other one does it, why do we do that? They did that because it would change the person who was looking at its behavior. And so if I look at a cow that doesn't have a brand, I'm like, I might have that cow. That might be my cow. I'm going to take that cow for myself. But if you see a brand that's got Tom's thing on it, you might- It fed a certain thing. It lived a certain place. Or you might return it and be like, oh, this is Tom's cow. I'm not going to mess with it because it's Tom's cow. It has his brand on it. And so the point of brand is to change behavior at scale. And so if I have no brand on a t-shirt, the likelihood someone buys it is low. If I put

a Nike swoosh on it, the likelihood someone buys it is high. And so that brand over lots of time of branding has changed the behavior of zillions of people. And so when you are branding, you're just associating an idea that people don't know about Stoke. Now, some people know about it, but not enough people know about it. And then we have to teach the masses what Stoke really is. And so you have to teach them. So like branding is really just a teaching process of associating things they don't know

with things they do know. So who's an artist that you've seen well integrate their ideal into a brand? An artist. So you're talking about like an individual? Yeah, or like a content creator. I mean, I think what like Rihanna did with Fenty is like a really elegant example of that. Like she can, and that's just a single person with a brand.

Most times it's the opposite, is that brands are going after artists and creatives that all embody similar values that they want to associate with so our work is basically to be stoke sultans to to i feel like you need a stoke bell i've been hanging on to that word for like three minutes you're like i've been waiting just to just repeating my head that's good um so and then so we need to teach because i feel like we're kind of, we've kind of been doing that. You need to be Stokebassadors.

Stokebassadors, yeah. Right? And spread the message. Spread the good news. This is what it is. Stokebaders. Debaters of Stoke. Oh, dude.

I thought you said another word. So we need to really sort of like, cause we say the word, but we don't really say what it is enough. But I think there's power in not saying what it is too. Like you don't want to clear, you don't want to too clearly define the ideal. Do you?

Cause does that minimize the meaning? Well, you're giving contextual clues. Right. You point in a direct, you just say not, yes, not yes.

But you don't ever give the Webster's, you don't want it to be too prescriptive. So the way that I think about brand from a visual perspective is like, imagine a bouquet of flowers, right? So you have all these different flowers inside of it. If we were to break the vase and scatter all the flowers, it's all the same components, but now it's not a bouquet anymore.

So did the bouquet ever exist to begin with? Oh, this is kind of like the pirate ship wood plank thing. Not sure, but I think I do. The philosophical ideal, if you replace all the same wood planks. Not sure, but I think I do. The philosophical ideal, if you replace all the same wood planks on a boat, is it the same boat? Yes and no. And so if you have all the flowers there, right?

So when you put all of them together, the bouquet has an identity, right? Because it's association between all the flowers is basically amalgamizes into one concept. Now, if you take out one flower and put it in a different flower, it does shift it a little bit. Now, if I break one of the flowers

or make it rotten, it really shifts it, which is why if you get a DUI or you rape a girl as a really good guy, all of a sudden it completely shifts the bouquet despite all the other flowers that you've done and associated with. Yeah, those flowers are bad now.

Right, exactly. You can't hand your girlfriend just one flower that's rotten. They should be like, why did you give me a rotten bouquet? Even though the rest of the flowers are totally fine. And so brand works a lot the same way, which is like you're assembling a bouquet of like, so you're like a wave is one of the flowers, but it's not all waves.

That's just an example of something that is Stoke, right? And then you put another one in another one. And then eventually people get a conglomerate idea of what Stoke really is. And it has to be a very careful like totally thought out uh arrangement 100 like each one has to fit perfect with one another or because people can suss that out if they see any kind of like yeah they're like oh those pedals are bad yeah it doesn't look like it goes with the rest of it oh sorry no yeah you're good what i was like if we made videos where we're like at the beach Corona, we're like, this is Stoke.

And then you go to a crime scene, you're like, that's not Stoke. Yeah. That would totally work. Just keep doing that. That would totally work. You need to know what it is, and you need to know what it's not.

Because people will throw things and be like, this is Stoke, too. You're like, it's not Stoke. Yeah, we were drafting the best sports movies last night, and people were throwing in Air Bud and Snatch. I was throwing in Jerry Maguire. But I think that was better than what these people were throwing in like Air Bud and like Snatch. I was like- I was doing Jerry Maguire. Yeah, but that was, I think that was better

than what these people were throwing in. And that spoke to your heart. Yeah, you're a romancer. That's part of your stoke is the romance of sports, but literally romance. Yeah, I'll say it. So- And Tom Cruise is timeless, which is also stoke.

Dude. So what's your primary business now? Stoke. Oh, fuck. Well, I've been hearing from my lawyers dude so acquisition.com is the is the primary and what do y'all do we buy companies okay so do you help other people buy companies or you buy companies and so how do you what makes a company like uh viable appealing yeah um a lot of things uh but, the biggest, the first and biggest one is, is it a company that we feel like we can add a lot of value to? And so a lot of that just comes from like, what's our expertise, what's our experience in. And so for us, um, our,

our biggest successes and what we continually double down on is just brick and mortar chains. So small businesses, you know, like a, like a photography studio chain or a teeth whitening chain or a nail salon chain, those are gym chain. These are all brick and mortar service businesses that are simple operating units. And tactile experiences, you got to be in there to do it. I like services personally. I don't do retail. I like services because it gives lots of people jobs. We're pretty good at training and teaching. And so that's what is a lot, that's what allows you to scale a service-based business. We're, we're really big on culture and being able to scale culture, which is really just a set of rules of how we behave. And so being able to explain that to the masses allows everyone to act in the same way on brand. And that's what allows you to scale

like a service-based business, which can be really profitable. And so we like those types of businesses. So number one is, can we add value to it? The second is, how big is it? Is it big enough for us to get into? If someone has this one location, it's hard to say that they have a good model or are they just a good operator and they have a lot of razzle-dazzle, which is totally fine. You don't know if you can reproduce that elsewhere. Exactly. It's not a system. It's really just a really charismatic founder, which is fine, but it's not what we would probably invest in. Yeah, you can't scale in. We'd want to see at least three, arguably, you know, ideally five or more locations with good unit economics, meaning each individual box makes money and it

makes sense in terms of how it makes money. And then for us, like how big is the overall market that we're going after? Like if someone has a tiny little weird grocery store thing that I might not be super interested in that, again, that's not service. But I'll just give you the last one, which is the founder itself. And I would say that most of the time we DQ founders more than businesses. It's like, man, I love that business. Didn't like the founder. No stoke. Interesting. And what DQs the person? They just don't have the charisma, their ethics, or it could be a multitude of things. Honestly, biggest one is ego.

That's the majority of the time. Interesting. Yeah. But they got to have some ego, right? I don't know. Have you seen egoless successful people? Totally. Interesting.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think any human has no ego, but I think that you absolutely can have, I mean, one of the most successful, actually, the two largest companies in our portfolio are headed by couples, husband, wife, duos, where they both are aware of their deficiencies. They both cover for one

another. And I would say that they're the most anxiety ridden of them of like, am I doing good enough? Is this right? I feel like we should be doing more like paranoia around improving the product, the service, the culture, the business overall. Whereas the more ego driven ones want to reflect more of the greatness of the business onto themselves. They want to take more of the credit. They tend to like hog more of the work. They don't delegate well.

They can't attract talent at scale because only assholes want to work for assholes. And so it's like, it just- I think I was kind of conflating ego with confidence too. Cause you're talking about self-awareness, right? Yeah, well, confidence I would define as the percentage likely that what you say will happen will happen. So like if he's a confident guy, like, and you can be confident at public speaking and

not confident at doing math because the percentage likely that the speech goes the way you want it to is high versus the percentage likely that you do the Excel sheet right is low. You can be confident in different arenas versus just confident overall. And so I think that that's like just a a segue on that for confidence i think it's it's nuanced in terms of like where are we applying it it seems like people who run purely on ego they they can get to a high place but it's kind of like a house of cards like they they don't have a stable foundation it can be it's just it's it's usually because so in and this is massive generalizations here. Now, are there super successful people who are super ego-driven? Absolutely. But I would say that

I would make the argument that they succeed despite their ego. Meaning if they did all of the things that they did that are right and they didn't have an ego, they would be more successful. So it's not that ego prevents success. It's just doesn't, I don't think it causes success. I think that some people who have egos become successful, some people who don't have egos become successful, but the things that need to be done are the things that drive the performance. Like either you advertised or you didn't, either you built the sales team or you didn't, either you had a good product or you didn't, whether you're an ego driven asshole or a really kind person, irrelevant. But in terms of how we want to live life and who we want to hang out with on a daily basis because at the end of the day like i'm gonna die no one's gonna remember me anyways um i'd rather hang out with people with more stuff does that fuck you up that

people won't remember us anyways no i think it's really freeing because you just feel like what's your own life make it what it is yeah do it for you when you so when did you start making content 26 seven months ago somewhere in there and then so what's your output per week these days i think right now we're about 300 a week more 350 350 pieces no pieces of content a week and so so with your videos shares with your videos because i found you through youtube videos and so do you do you basically go if you're like speaking to someone an idea pops in your head like that'd be a good video or do you have like a brainstorm sesh where you're like i'm gonna do a video on this topic you know so my brainstorming is twitter or x now that's where i do all my brainstorming so i probably tweet like five times a day.

And it's just like, as things come to me and if there's a lot of traction on it, then I'll make a short about it. And if there's a lot of traction on that, we'll make longs about it. Right. And are you conscious of your brand while you're tweeting?

Like, do you ever have thoughts and you're like, oh, that's a good thought, but it doesn't really fit into like the kind of culture I'm building around this thing. I think it would be less than, because if it's from me, it's going to be on for me so you believe it's it's a wide scope what works because it's all it's narrow as long as it's authentic i'm i'm me so i have lots of different aspects like was once a frat bro also management consultant also a gym bro also an investor like i have a lot of things that are just like part of

you yeah exactly and so like if it's if it relates to things that are part of me then it is on brand for me if if i'm going to say it then it's on brand where but it might not be contextual to the platform right it's not form fit for where it just might not be a good x piece of content x as in x.com so if you're like trees should be blue you're like maybe not on x maybe that belongs somewhere else yeah if if that's uh if that were quarter my brand which i don't talk about trees much or the color blue is there a reason on the blue kick i guess no no i hear you i hear you because that's what stuck out to me there yeah um well none of my i'm trying to think i don't think any of our brands are blue

um we can we can circle hmm well leads is blue that's right the book is below the book is below what's up guys we're interrupting the podcast let you know that we are on tour get your tickets to a show near you at chad and jt.com do not miss out on these shows they're epic you have fun right at the shows yeah it's the time of my life you heard it here first we're also brought to you by the legends at blue chew guys we want you to have strong boners better sex we want you to have the freaking most rigid hog in the world and it all starts with chewing a little blue chew tablet because they've got a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as viagra cialis and levit, but in chewable tablets and at a fraction of the cost.

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using promo code GODIP at liquidiv.com. All right, back to the show. But so you'll put out a tweet, and what you get back tells you if that's a good idea or not from the market yeah they tell me if they think it's interesting like i say i think this is interesting if they like and share it they tell me they think it's interesting too i i'm with you i worked at a super liberal place and they would complain about like iggy azalea doing like uh appropriating culture and i'd be like well kind of let the market decide and then it would turn them off they were like don't talk like that and I was like

well if people like it there must be some kind of utility to it and I don't think she's the best but I think time will settle these things but uh I how do you how do you reconcile that when people feel like taste and even sometimes morality can be adjudicated through the market adjudicated is that the right word no i just don't know what it means like when think when people think that stuff should be worked out by the market oh um i don't touch morality stuff often because i'm like yeah because what's the point yeah right like there there are if if if i can't if i can't say this is true this isn't true um then I usually don't touch it.

So like all of the content that I make, I have two boxes for it. I just want it to be true and I want it to be useful. And so like if I say some things work and some things don't, then that is true. Is it useful? Not really. If I say, hey, XYZ, when someone walks in the door, you know, give them a checklist and they'll be more likely to buy. It works, but it's not always true. And so what I try and do is find the sweet spots where it says in this context, in a weight loss sale, if you put this checklist in front of people

and you don't do anything different in the process, a higher percentage of people buy. That's both true and useful. And so that's kind of where the sweet spot of where I try to make content. And that's what the books are about is like, if I put something out, I don't want anyone to be able to say like, that's wrong. I mean, they can say that's wrong, but that's their problem. But in terms of like- You know it works. This is like, if more people find out about your stuff, more people will buy it, period. Fight me. And so that's really like, when I create the arguments that are inside of like the books that I have and the content I put out, it's always based on those types of arguments.

It's like, if you do more of this thing, you will make more money, period. What do you think is the biggest mistake content creators make today? Not being them. Yeah. A hundred percent. We'll try like basically getting taken over by the algorithm and then like talking about blue trees when they don't actually fuck with blue trees. Right. But they did it because they did one blue tree post and people brought that back.

Right. So it had to. And so they got a lot of likes and they're like, maybe I'll start making more stuff on blue trees. But like then they go down that alleyway for six months or a year and then they're like, oh, I'm like the blue tree channel, but like, I don't even care about trees. Like that's not even the stuff I like talking about. And so they can't actually sustain it because the biggest brands are built over decades, not days or weeks or months. And so

you have to optimize again, like remember starting at the end, or at least for me, starting at the end and then working your way backwards. It's like the only thing that will persist over my entire life is me. And so for my life. Um, and so I always fall back on that being there. Cause it's, I'm going to be, as long as as long as i'm alive i'll be here right and so if everything that i talk about is related to stuff that i fuck with then it will always be on brand for me now what's cool is that my interests will slowly morph and shift over time but it usually doesn't happen overnight and so there's something called successive approximation but basically it's like you, it's like slow boiling frog, right? Like you, like the, the Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney thing was going from like cold water to hot water. Yeah. Now if they'd done that over 30 years, it probably would have been fine and

seamless. Right. But it was too big of a shock too soon. And so it's about having like a hundred tiny iterations that that's how you can like steer a brand. These are oil tankers. We're moving them slow, baby. Yeah. We're Titanic-ing, minus the iceberg. They hit an iceberg. Yeah, they hit an iceberg. They did. So are you saying follow your inspiration? Is that correct? Follow the things that you're interested in.

Yeah, sure. Inspiration always scares me as it works. I feel like it means so many things to different people. If you're interested in it, then I think talk about it. Yeah, I guess it's like what uh you're sort of a create it's creative spark the right word sure yeah i'll say there's there's two also two categories of creators that i think is probably worth delineating so everything i just talked about i would say is is is more for entertainers so on the other hand you've got educators and i think there's way more

mistakes in the education side than there is the entertainment side the entertainment loop is the algorithm loop where they start to like making content about stuff they don't actually care about because they think it's going to feed the algorithm right that the educators start trying to teach on stuff that they haven't done and so they try and pretend they have more authority so that they can get more views but they don't have that and so at some point they feel like fraud because they are um like that's like people like how do you do with imposter syndrome i was like you don't have it if you so at some point they feel like fraud because they are, um, like that's the, like people were like, how do you deal with imposter syndrome? I was like, you don't have it if you did what you're talking about. Yeah. Like I don't have imposter syndrome about talking about investing. It's what I do every day. Right. So like, are you suspicious of like academics a

little bit in that respect? Um, not suspicious, but are you a little bit like, cause I had that too. It's like when you're in film school and you have a teacher, but then you check his IMDB and he hasn't made movies. You're like, well, you're telling me this shit, but you haven't sold anything more than I have at this point. I think that, I mean, I would say that that is the most legitimate complaint. Like I think that all content is consumed within the context of the creator's background. So like, for example, if I tweet on the ivory throne, it might get likes, it might not. If Elon Musk does it, it'll get a zillion shares and likes and whatever, because it's consumed within his context. Which to be fair,

that context for many times is the brand itself. But part of the brand, the things that we've associated with it, right, are the background evidence that the person is who they say they are. And so like I had, you know, just under a $50 million exit, you know, we have a portfolio right now that does plenty of money. And so people have that evidence. So when I say, hey, when I'm buying companies, so if you'd asked me, what do you look for in companies that you're trying to buy? And I'm a school teacher that doesn't have an investment portfolio. And I give you my answer. They could say the exact same words as me, but everyone would be like, you're full of shit. No, it's like when I talk about how to win a basketball, it doesn't have the same credence

as when MJ does it. Which disappoints me because I know what I'm talking about. No, it's like when I talk about how to win at basketball, it doesn't have the same credence as when MJ does it. Yeah. Which disappoints me because I know what I'm talking about. I think it's valid. Thank you. Yeah. But like, that's like, that's the, that's like the number one. That's like the, the biggest was like the entertainers go down the algorithm trap of talking about stuff that they're not actually interested in.

Educators go down to the ego and status faking track. The fake it till you make it which i'm so aggressively against right like just be real about the stuff that you actually have done and if you want like in in my world it's the opposite it's do crazy shit and then you can talk about it yeah and then was there a point in your did you want to get into content creation prior to before you started doing it or was there a point where you're like i think i've earned enough at this point to where i can legitimately talk about what i want to talk about so two things um i've made content but the content was different over whatever season i was in like so when i owned my gyms i was talking about like intermittent fasting and like programming

is that good by the way if you stick with it it, sure. Okay. Yeah. Um, but, uh, from a, from a creation perspective, I just saw the content. It's just like lead nurture. Like people might click an ad, see some content and then decide to buy. It wasn't to get customers. It was just to let people know that I wasn't a total idiot. Like that was it. Once, once we probably it was two and change years ago um i saw i mean this is ridiculous but i'll share it anyways um so kylie jenner became a billionaire or like she was on the cover of forbes and she was like 20 and i was 27 and i felt so poor and bad a little inadequate compared to her of course yeah um and so whenever so i have this rule with business which is like

if someone's making more money than you then they're better at the game of business in some way than you are. And you have something to learn from them. It doesn't mean you have to like, just because you learn from someone doesn't mean you need to become them. And I think that's a huge one. It's like, I can learn, like, I'm going to take a really extreme example of somebody who has zero stoke, but like, you can look at Hitler and think there are things we can learn from this. Now, obviously there are things that we should learn from it in the other way, like we'll learn what not to do but in terms of like creating a movement in terms of oration rhetoric like there's a lot of things that he had that that were good just used for the wrong means right right and so bringing it back bringing it back home to content um kylie jenner hit the front

page i felt inadequate and then conor mcor, like months later, had proper 12, sold for 600 million. And then Clooney had just had his, the first ever of, you know, what was it? Casamigos. Casamigos, sold for a billion. And then The Rock had Taramana. And then Huda Beauty was a big influencer. And she sold a portion for 600 million as well. And so it was like within this corridor of like 12 months, like all these massive exits happened from all these people had big personal brands. And I had this belief.

I was like, I feel like I'm good at business. And so like at the time, I think I had taken home that year, like something like 17 million in income like that year. And I was like, I felt like I was hot shit. But when I saw that, I was like, I don't know anything. And so that was when I started getting into the idea of like, maybe I should build a personal brand. Maybe I should start making content. I still didn't like the idea of like being famous. Cause I kind of like being more like just doing my own thing. But I had a friend of mine who's, um, really big, uh, kind of like celebrity. And I was at, I was at his house talking over the kitchen table. I said, don't you get tired of like the death threats and the letters to your kids and like all this stuff. And he was like, if that's the price I have to pay for the impact I want to have, I would

pay it every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And he said that to me. I just felt like such a pansy for like not taking this step. For being afraid of that. Yeah. And so I was like, and literally the week after that, I made my first YouTube video and that was, that was it. And so do you think this is like a specific moment in time where to be a successful entrepreneur,

you do have to be like front of the house and kind of publicly facing, or do you see people who are doing it in discrete ways? I don't think you need to. I do think that increasingly, so if just from a statistic perspective, cost to acquire a customer on paid media has gone up like a hundred percent in a very short period of time. So it's doubled, like the cost to get a customer has doubled. And so what that means is, at least how I translate that, is brands will need to have trusted ambassadors to associate with so that consumers trust whatever they're buying because trust has never been lower. And so you have to create a brand that people trust, associate it with a product, and then do it. Now, you can partner with creators. It doesn't have to be you, but it has to be somebody.

I think more brands would benefit from it. Now, you have the mega dudes, like Elon has basically hacked that system and gone public, made one of the biggest personal brands of all time. And people are like, I like Elon. I will vote for that by buying his shares and buying his cars. And so he has a way to monetize

every single person on planet earth in the most efficient monetization vehicle, which is a public company of shares. Like the most efficient vehicle to make money if you have a public brand is to go public. Wait, so what do you mean? I'm sorry. You can make the most money if you have a public brand, because if you think- And by public brand, you mean him being the public brand? Yes, our personal brand.

Oh, and then people can invest in the brand because it's just called your stock broker and put shares in it. And if you think about the size of a business in terms of potential, it's number of potential units sold times potential gross profit per unit. So like if you're, you know, if I wanted to get into banking, for example, like everybody banks. And so like the TAM is huge, right? So that might be a good opportunity, but like, does my brand resonate with banking? Maybe. But if I wanted to sell something else, then it might have a much smaller target audience and smaller price tag, right? If I want to sell golf clubs,

one, it's not really my brand but if I did, there's a very small percentage of people who do it but maybe the lifetime values is higher per person. So that's the really hard exercise that a lot of creators have to go through when they're going through because you don't want to start like a hundred companies.

You want to be like, what's the one thing that I can slice that hits the most of my audience that has the most long-term uh value per customer and that's pretty much like the the x mark that you try and find when you're trying to build a brand but when you're a public company the the most expensive thing that someone will buy is all their money to invest in something like investment opportunities which is why they're so heavily regulated because everyone will give their life savings to something because it's an investment, is anyone can invest in anything, which is why you get the most money from the most amount of people. And so that's why a public company, if you have a front-facing founder that is public and very big

and vocal, can be a hack to generating the most money on the flip side if Elon does something that's egregious the business he could destroy the entire business it's like the uber guy Travis Kalanick or whatever but he didn't even have a really he wasn't like he didn't have a profile like Elon I guess that was even more internal to like the Silicon Valley world but everyone's like oh this guy's hard charging he'll run through walls and everyone's like dude this guy's reckless he's doing like too many walls yeah he's doing espionage on like his competitors and shit he got too stoked yeah he had a cool well ego too he was burning on ego yeah i don't know i don't to be fair i don't know i know i read one book but i think we're but i feel confident he seems like he he's yeah i don't know the dude for sure

joseph gordon levitt pilot he's like you're not super pumped i'm like wrong kind of stoked wrong so yeah he's pushing the the stoke with the i want to just circle back one thing on the authenticity thing with content creators and chasing like the the algo do you think part of it is like because they're chasing the trappings of what come with that success bro stoke boulders for shoulders that's what's up dog thanks man all right getting warm in here so so like i feel like sometimes the way people go the mistake i mean sometimes i think they're chasing profit but sometimes i think they're chasing other things too like attention or status stuff like that so i guess i was curious what is like your goal and what you're chasing

so the mission of the business is to make real business successful for everyone and so that's why we put out the books and the courses and the content and everything's free. So like my courses are free on my site without any opt-in. Like you don't have to give me any. So you just want to democratize entrepreneurship. Yes. And do you think all people are capable of it, of being an entrepreneur? I think of it as like a singular skill that just is blessed in certain people. I think if we're defining entrepreneurship as just someone who transacts in a business, I think anyone can do that. That's really sweet. If any kid can start a lemonade stand,

then anyone can be an entrepreneur. The question is how good of an entrepreneur can you be? Now that definitely has, I think, genetic predispositions just like anything else does. And also just nature-nurture side of it. Like if you grow up in a family of entrepreneurs, likely that you're an entrepreneur is significantly higher

than if you grew up in a family of government workers. So what are the muscles of entrepreneurship that you would most recommend people work on? And I know it's probably case by case, but broadly. Delayed gratification. Yeah, baby. Like number one, and to be fair, that's probably for everything,

but delayed gratification is number one. Being generous first, which is really tough for a lot of people. Like being willing to A, give more than you get back and give without expectation. And that kind of pairs with the delayed gratification thing which is like i'm going to give them and give them and give and i also have to accept that some people will burn me and that shouldn't dissuade me from continuing to give and so i say like that's probably number one number two um and then number three is

being romantic about the work and not the outcome. So like I got, I was, I was on this podcast not that long ago and someone asked me, they're like, so what motivates you now? So we crossed a hundred million dollars net worth when I was 31, I'm 34 now. And you know, I publicly say, I'm like, I'm going to show, I'm going to document my way to a billion and beyond. And that's kind of all the stuff I'm sharing, you know, to the audience. But like that, that idea doesn't motivate me. It's also like way in the future, like it would be a one-time thing. We'd cross the line. I'd be like, well, now what? Right. The thing that has unlocked more juice for me than anything else is this is, I'm going to try

and say it in a way that's not trite. Actually seeing what your best looks like. Like, I think there's a little Giants, you know, the movie, the football movie. I think it's that movie when he's like, is that your best? And he gets on the thing. It might be that, or it's, it's one of the football movies. And he, you know, he's doing the push thing where the coach is on the, on the little machine guy and he pushes him and he says, you can stop when you've done your best. And he stops at like the 30 yard line. And he's like, is that your best? And then he like, he pushes again and he's like, and now he's at the 50 and he's like, is that your best? And he pushes again. And and he's like is that your best and then like he pushes again and he's like and now he's at the 50 and he's like is that your best and he pushes again and he's like is that your bet he goes all the way and he pushes it past the end zone right and then the kid gets off completely like i want to leave nothing on the field but i want to see what

nothing on the field actually looks like and i think the more i do the more i realize i can do and that's what gets me stoked so have you found sorry uh yeah was there a moment when you because you did you have that big moment like 100 million is that so you you reached that milestone right was there sort of like you're like that that's that's the end goal was there a part of you like that's the end goal and then you got there and you had that kind of thing where you're like is this it you know what i'm talking about i felt nothing with it but i also expected to feel nothing with it and so i started equis just knock on the day after so i'm not a bit like i so i have now realized just from my own self that the time that i when i look back on my life the things that i enjoyed the most have been

the pursuit not the goal like when i actually look backwards now looking forwards you think it's the goal but looking backwards all my happiest times are like when i was even in the struggle sleeping in the gym like when you have a worthy foe that challenges you to the nth of your ability and forces you to get better like that flow get me fired up right now let's go yeah that flow is where is where i feel most alive a goal worth pursuing that's that makes you stronger because you're fortified in that pursuit like if you don't know what you're going after, anyone can kick your ass, basically. And so that has been like true. So I think I saw this interview from Kobe that I just like loved.

And they said, so most athletes are either really afraid of losing or they really want to win. I don't know if you saw this clip. I just saw it. Yeah. And he says, I don't think I'm either. And me paraphrasing what his response was, is like, he just wanted to do the absolute best he possibly could divorce of outcome. And I think that a lot of people will say something like, yeah, I just, I just want to try really hard. But then there's like, there's the second part of the sentence where they're like, so that I can win so that I can whatever, which means that that's still not the goal. It's just the vehicle. It's just the vehicle. But I think like the thing that I've been working the most on myself that has been yielding me disproportionate returns in terms of my effort and what I'm getting out of myself is cutting the second half of the sentence off and saying like, how hard can I work?

You just want to know how hard you can try. I want to see how hard I can try. Have you felt that limit? Have you pushed the tackling dummy as far as it'll go? Have you seen what your limit is and emptying the tank? Or do you think it's like not finite? It could keep growing. That's what it is.

I just think, I think that the more you do, the more you realize you can do. You feel big, huh? Like, cause you're just like, dude, I could just keep. You prove yourself. You give evidence. You're like, well, I did that. So that gives me evidence that I can probably go a little further.

And then you do that and you're like, you just get this never ending momentum of like, cause like the first book I wrote has done really, really well. A hundred million dollar offers. It has like 17,000 five stars on Amazon. It's a, it's always a top 100 book still like two years later. Um, and when I wrote my second book,

a hundred million dollar leads, I worked on that book five times harder than I did on the first book. And I think that that book will outsell the first book over the longevity of its book career. Um, but I had so much enjoyment from seeing how hard it was to really write that. That book is probably the hardest book I'll ever write. Cause it was literally trying to consolidate advertising into a single book, which is mine. So hard to do. Um, but it unlocked a new level of effort. And I know that future books that I write, that will be the new baseline. That'll be the new minimum standard that I, that I know I can do. And so, because I was

thinking about this actually this morning, weirdly. I was fast forwarding to if I had a kid and they were playing peewee soccer or whatever, right? I don't want to be the dad who's like, you won high five or you lost high five. I want to be the dad who's completely divorced from the outcome. And we won 10 to 0 and i look at little timmy and i'm like you did not try your hardest and on the flip side if we lost 10 to 0 and he left everything on the field i'd be like you fucking crushed it right like i am proud of you yeah and that's been like and i and i want to keep that same perspective for myself if i'm timmy and future me is dad looking back like i want to make that man proud and that man's the only man who knows how hard i could have tried but didn't

so like everyone else will give you applause for the stuff that you're already really good at and do well at because they're comparing your outcome to what they think they could achieve but like only you can compare your effort to what you know you could have tried and i think that's like that gap is what i'm trying to close in myself and that's the like that's the journey i'm on right now and the business is just the outward manifestation of that what's the main prohibitor in terms of emptying the tank is it fear that it won't work out if you do or is it just laziness you mean why don't people yeah because i feel like everybody can empty the tank and i feel like most people don't or maybe they just have too much responsibility and they don't have like the bandwidth to do it

the way they'd want to. I think it's, um, I think it's, it's well, one, there's a lack of comfort because it's usually new. Like you push the cup, you push past the comfort zone. You're outside of where you're used to. I have a hard time in general, just a side note, answering why questions, cause I don't know why anyone does anything, but, uh, but I'm asking you like you should know. Yeah. I have no idea. No idea. But in yourself, how do you, how do you, on the days where you don't empty the tank? Cause they must come. Sure. How do you rationalize that to yourself that you didn't have it that day? Um, so I, so the times when I don't empty my tank now is usually when I don't have clarity on what I should be doing. If I have a really clear goal of what I need to do, that is my, like, that's my shit. Like if I have a three day weekend

and a blank calendar and a big goal and a lot of coffee, like I, you will never find a happier version of me just chowing. Like I call it like, I need another bone. Like, and right now, cause I just launched the book and I like literally next week we have our big leadership meeting and my my whole talk to the team is like i need another bone and so like let's just figure out what alex's bone's gonna be and i'm gonna gnaw on it for the next 18 months i feel like a good marker for finding what you really want to do in life is when you don't notice weekends or holidays where you just sort of like i remember because when i started doing comedy it's like i was teaching like surf lessons and there's fourth of july was coming up yeah i didn't even know fourth of july is like my favorite holiday i didn't even like notice it you know it just

doing open mics and like and you just sort of like like oh fourth of july went by and and like then you're like okay now now i know i'm really locked into what i want to do you don't experience fomo if you're doing something better if you're in your gomo dude nailed it clip it what do you have a what's your biggest vice vice yeah um i mean i drink on occasion if you want to consider that advice that's advice um if you want to consider dessert advice you could but like i just eat in my macros it doesn't really matter too much um you like ice cream yeah i love ice yeah big ice cream fan me too i'd say it's i'd say if i had to pick up only one type of dessert it would be ice cream dude same yeah i like mixed i like mixed methodologies though i like like warm cookie ice cream with like crunch.

Oh, yeah, exactly. A little texture. I want temperature contrast. I want texture contrast. Yeah. My brother was talking shit one time on Pazookies.

He was like, Oh, he's the best. He's like, it's just a cookie with ice cream. I was like, yeah, that's all it is.

It doesn't need to be other. He's like, I guess he didn't like the name, but I'm like, well, they got to call it something. I think Pazookie works, but those two things together, it's kind of undefeated bro they didn't change

pazuki sounds too much like dookie right i think they need to change it too because pazuki yeah they could just go like cookie yeah not not pazuki this is not dookie yeah but that's people define themselves too much by what they're not but not by what they are which i do think is a modern phenomenon that distracts me and bothers me yeah i think they have more examples to look at to say what they're not do you have people like i'm sorry that i frame it in like a i'm it's not that i'm looking for like holes in the game but i'm genuinely curious like do you do you have a mentor it's gonna sound weird as shit so yeah but it's wildly narcissistic it's yourself sort of so yeah so basically um all right we're gonna go into it all right we're gonna go deep bro

all right you got the light on your head we're behind you go deep. Bro, we're going to go deep. Hey, we'll go with you. All right. You got the light on your head. We're behind you in the cave. Let's find out. Roller coaster. Let's put the seat. Chad, JT, and Alex, we good, man. Click in. So there's something called the Solomon Paradox. And so the Solomon Paradox, if you remember King Solomon from the Old Testament, really wise guy.

Genius, smart guy. Exactly. And so the Solomon Paradox simply states that people give better advice to other people than they follow themselves. Absolutely. And so they've actually observed this in psychology exam. They do double blind. They actually whitewash someone's own personal stats from something. And then they have the same person look at themselves from an objective perspective,

not knowing it's themselves. And the advice they give that person differs from what they do in reality, which to me just indicates that there are emotions at play when it's your own stuff, but you can be more logical and impartial when it's from the outside in. And so one of the things I've struggled to have like therapists and coaches, I've never been able to like do it well. Um, because I feel like 90% of the time that I'm talking to them, I'm trying to give them context around a decision so they can help me make a decision. Um, which feels like a big waste of time, especially like, it's like, I need you to

have lived my whole life so you can have context on why this, why this decision means something on the flip side is that I also feel like they have misaligned incentives, meaning like they're only incentives for me to come to the next session. They want you back. They need the money to keep coming in. They don't want you to get too good.

Exactly. I mean, like, it sounds kind of, right? And so taking all that in consideration, people are better giving advice to other people. I have to give context to somebody in order to get some advice. And then their incentives are aligned. I was like, well, what would be the best person to give me advice? And so for me, the best person to give me advice has been my mental envisionment of 85-year-old me,

who's already achieved every goal that I wanted and more, and is the man that I would like to be. And then having basically sessions with that man and saying, hey, it's Monday. This is what I have on my docket this week. What do you think? And then I put my 85-year-old self hat on and I'm like, all right, well, you know, what's the goal? What are you trying to work on? I'm like, well, this.

And he's like, well, what are your concerns? I'm like, well, this is kind of what I'm worried about. Well, you know, that's not going to matter. And then I'm like, yeah, I get it. But this, what about this other thing? So I can skip past the 90 of giving context because future me already has context in the situation future me is also 100 aligned with long-term me which is i think a big thing because short-term he always wants to make you know short-term

decisions but long-term me is like dude like let's do this for us right like and the the biggest thing that's gotten me through really hard times has been working to gain the approval of that man. And in a lot of ways, it's scary because it's the hardest man's approval to gain because he always knows how much harder I could have pushed. And so it has forced me to pick fewer things to try and excel at, because I know for me to get the red, you know, the stamp of approval from future me, who I call Solomon, even though it's future me, um, to get the approval of Solomon, I need to leave it all on the field. And so like walking into the book launch, we had like 500,000 people who registered for the launch, like a whole city. It's like

Baltimore, like all of them. Um, like when I, when I walked up, I knew that I had made Solomon proud before I stepped on stage. And so I didn't have a lot of stage fright because I knew I prepared a ton. I'd done every single day for the weeks leading up to it. I had done, uh, what I'd said, the said the presentation out loud. And then I had done a recording of the presentation.

And then I would watch the presentation with my slides up and edit the slides. And I did that every single day for the entire month leading up to it. So I'd already done the speech like a hundred times before I stepped on stage. And so independent of what happened, Solomon was like, you have my approval and that is enough. And I think that that's been it for me. It's like, if I can gain that man's approval, then the noise from the outside world

and the approval of others has mattered less and less. And that's my continuous, that is my pursuit is to make that man's opinion the only opinion I listen to how jacked is solomon when you visualize him the limit does not exist bro he's a mountain who's uh say you look at like a 75 year old bodybuilder which physique who which bodybuilder who's older now do you look up to the most i think frank zane has a great physique he aged extremely well he stayed in shape um there are more and more examples now because there's all this anti-aging stuff and people take better care we have more science we know we know things now um but yeah that'd probably that'd be the single example of

guys do you think he has the most beautiful body in like olympia kind of history not my favorite body i think he's the best um i think lee had a great body my favorite i really love flex wheeler's body flex was just like let me look at it real quick oh look look at the black and there's a black and white image of flex wheeler that's just like unbelievable so he's before arnold right no he's after okay yeah he's after arnold um damn. Okay. He's after Arnold. Damn. Milos Sarcev, at his peak time, I loved his body. Mike Menser, he loved Mike Menser's body. Man, I don't even know these dudes' rigs. And I used to follow this.

I had a subscription to Muscle & Fitness. I don't know what happened. Yeah. Menser's like Arnold's days. Menser's like Arnold's time. Yeah. I can only remember the... Personally, I don't know

If you can tell By what I'm going for But I'm going for Ronnie I'm a Coleman head I almost didn't I mean I know I look more like A Dexter Jackson

Yeah But I'm going for Ronnie Alright And I actually And I actually really like Flex Wheeler's body Sorry enough Phil Heath's body

Really like Phil Heath's Even though Yo They started to get a little bit less gargantuan right in his era they toned it down from the coleman like 320 weight kind of stuff i don't know i just think there haven't been enough i mean um big ramey big ramey was like the biggest bodybuilder who won and he won in the last three years just a black and white afflux wow i mean yeah there's not you know he keeps the abdomen a little more tight too

than uh he's exceptional. I have a random one about Laird Hamilton. Who? Laird Hamilton. Surfer guy. You'd get along with him. Okay. Yeah.

I think he'd be right up your alley. Yeah, I could see you guys like slapping hands for sure. Do you do ice baths? Not really. No? No. He does this workout thing where you lift weights underwater. Oh. He's like a big wave surfer guy.

But I'd check out his documentary on Hulu. It's very inspiring. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just kicking ass the whole time. Yeah. Dude, I did peptides recently. Okay.

And I had to get off them because I think I did too many out the gates. Got too jacked. Yeah. Too fast? I get it. You got huge, dude. I wish, bro.

But I was taking CJC 1295, BPC 157. I don't know what any of these are. No? You haven't delved into that world? Not peptides, no. No, yeah. And it also made me a little bit manic, which I'm a little predisposed to. So I just woke up at three in the morning and my first thought was you're amazing. And I was like, I need to slow down. I feel like that stuff. I feel like you should take more of that. Yeah. Maybe I

shouldn't. Yeah. I don't know why I was so wary of that thought. It was probably just the volume. You wake up with too much, a little intense. Yeah. Also I was like, you know what? If I was thinking about my Solomon, I was like, I don't know if you've earned that thought right now. So it doesn't feel egocentronic to the moment you're in. And that's why I pushed it out, bro. Fair. But I appreciate you wanting me to feel that. But are you very adventurous with that stuff

or do you keep it pretty tight? No, I've been on TRT for four years, five years. I was 28 or 29 when I started TRT. I did it when I was 18 for a summer and I was doing hgh together it was most fun summer of my life but i fucked up my shoulder i was just doing more overhead lifting than i should have been doing and then it ultimately resulted five years later in surgery so the longevity part of it is the thing that people don't look out for well it's like i mean

i keep it's like if you can't do it for a decade don't do it for a day like i just love that frame um and especially i mean when it comes to anything but especially fitness stuff so everything for me starts with joint pain which is like which of these hurt my joints the least that i can do the most amount of volume on and then those are the ones that i hammer so that i can just accumulate the most fatigue on the muscle and then ultimately drive the most growth and for shoulders which one is that exercises um so like overhead press for example doesn't doesn't build shoulders a ton now you build strength for sure i mean you'll get a ton of core strength you'll get a lot there's a lot of tricep uh in overhead press especially like

from here up is it's all tricep so oftentimes limiter is in your is in your shoulders so like if you do overhead press oftentimes like you could do this and then like at the end you could do these so it's like your delts are not the limiter, your triceps are. So you can't finish the lift because you still have juice in your delts, but you don't have juice in your triceps, right? So if you actually use perfect form as your compass for when you stop reps, then you always stop shorter when your shoulders are done. And so I do a lot more like lateral raises and things like that to build shoulders because they are the sole focus. I can take them beyond death. So that's

giving you more width. Yeah. And are you strict with the technique or are you swinging them? Uh, so I, I, I train, so I'm strict with the technique for all of my first reps and I will continue to do the same technique, but with less and less range of motion so like if i'm doing lateral raises like i'll hit perfect for the first 10 or 12 and then i'll hit three quarters and then i'll hit whatever now i don't do that on every set but if i want to like finish the last two sets off really strong i'll do something like that like i want to i want to squeeze everything out of it to be fair delts are also muscles that can recover faster they're smaller they can take more workload than like your back can like if you're doing deadlifts like training that way is a terrible idea

i think i messed up my shoulder doing that really yeah yeah because you know you know i had like a thing where my brother he's at like a similar build to you and uh i saw him over fourth of july and he just looked like a tank so i was like i need to lift more because i've always been more of like a cardio guy yeah and now my shoulder kind of hurts so i'm back on yoga well like that's that's where i i i like the bodybuilding perspective like in my opinion bodybuilding is the most functional training hear me out because being jacked is functional right like every time i'm on video i'm using it every time I'm in a picture I'm using it whereas people are like well when are you gonna yeah when are you gonna let yeah and you can't either you're right the utility of it is

to appear like you could kill a lion that's how it's like no one it looks at a peacock with their plumage and they're like yeah but that can't stab a rhinoceros it's like I don't need to peacock with their plumage and they're like, yeah, but that can't stab a rhinoceros. It's like, well, I don't need to. I got to impress the girl over here. It's crushing it. Yeah. Sexy, sexy dog.

Yeah. No one's going to say peacocks literally invented peacocking. Right. I know. And then mystery totally stole it from. The originators. So with that, with gals, did you always have pretty good rhythm or was that something you worked on similar to your body, similar to your entrepreneurial spirit? I always did okay there um yeah good you know what i like where you're

landing it just leave it it's not a good thing to volume eyes on people talk about i'm like what are you doing yeah how do you feel about that like all these i guess i'll speak for myself yeah all these podcasts where like 40 year old dudes are talking about like how to get laid and stuff like that. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm like, shouldn't you have like a family and like something like,

he's like, look man, if I see a girl and she's like, you know, looks at another guy, I'm like, later,

I'm like, dude, you're 42, man. What are you doing, bro? Go home and like pet your dog and cook a burger.

Put some Bengay on, you know, I'm sure those joints are hurting. I, um, it just speaks to me of like a culture that has like misaligned values i guess i think it's the polarization of gender roles so it's just like right now gender's the hot topic i don't talk about it because i don't want to get into it um but because there's so much around definition of terms people are just oscillating on opposite sides of the pendulum. Yeah, it's really like a posturing move. And I'm like, I'm a big do whatever you want guy.

But yeah, I haven't, I haven't, I probably steered clear of that movement because that's not my message. Like mine is about entrepreneurship and believing that the only, like there are a lot of problems in the world. And I believe that entrepreneurship and business is the most efficient way to solve problems. And so I will not be able to solve all the problems in the world.

I think anyone can, but I can at least help equip the future entrepreneurs who will. And if everyone has a house, we'll be fighting about that stuff less. I do think like there's a lot of efficacy and if people are, you know, have food security and shelter security, maybe some of these other fights that we're having that are more on the margins won't feel as significant. I, you know, I would actually argue the opposite. Oh, you think that, oh, you think because we have security, we have to find something else to argue about. Because the bottom part of the pyramid is taken care of. We're like, let's fight about more nebulous stuff. Yeah. you if you go to africa they're not arguing about it

because they want food people say that but i went to africa they're fighting no i'm really okay i was like i was like really that would have been the best counterpoint jt got tried negging yeah no that was great no but i think i think it's like it's we have we have so much abundance in everything that we have right We're trying to find. So Layla, my wife found this really interesting study on this, but basically the number of problems that the brain finds is always the same. Yes. And so all you do is switch the things that you see are problems. And I just thought that, so then, then it, for me, it helped me think about problems as not problems because they're just a thing that will always be there and so the easiest way to solve a problem is to

decide it's not a problem to begin with it's just the mind's function yeah it's supposed to do that because trying to keep you alive yeah trying to determine that threats like the really happy monkey probably didn't do as well as the paranoid monkey that was watching out for lines because the happy monkey's like dude life is awesome and then done you know what i mean right but the other one that was like i don't know i don't know i don't know like this place did you hear that did you hear that like stressed out his mind like he's up in the tree and the other is like it's fine it's always the rain relax and then done yeah you're always getting the same level of stressed out just have those good problems to focus on yeah champagne problems like that's the that's

the goal would you argue that the monkey that was happy, but died early had a better life? Yes. And what's, what really like, uh, bends my noodle is when we even use the word early. So I'm going to go,

I'm going to go dark and then we're going to go light. All right. Perfect. So I had a cat named Bill, nickname chill Bill. Nice. Um um awesome dude max stoke yeah and bill was always chill best cat i've ever had and he like he was like a dog he would just like chill like he would come up and just like he'd just always be around you he's like

hey i'm here if you need something i'm here and i was like i appreciate that and so one day and bill was a young cat when i had him he's a young lad and then um like i think like 20 months later he died like he died of like some freak heart thing his heart was too big classic right um evidence by his chill nature and uh it actually i think we actually found out it was because like it was because of that because like his heart beat. So he literally was like extra chill, like too chill. But so I was really sad and I was like, why am I sad? Like, why am I sad about Bill? And so I thought about it and I was like,

I'm sad because I think he should have lived longer. Like it felt unfair that he died at like just under two years old as a cat. So then I thought, what if all cats only lived six months and Bill actually made it like four lifetimes? And then I was like, that's deep. I was like, I'd probably be really stoked that he lived such a long, amazing life. And so it was only based on my expectation that he should live 10 years or 12 years or something, rather than saying, well, on the scale of 5,000 years,

we're all living that short period of time. And so if I die at 30 or I die at 70 on a 5,000 year timeline, who cares? And so that helped me get over, like did the monkey die too early? It's like the monkey died and he had a good life. Right. Yeah, it's like someone dies, like of natural causes they die.

Cause you know, they have a painless aneurysm in their sleep, which sounds like a bummer. Next day, whole city floods, everyone else dies by drowning. Who had it better? Aneurysm, bro, with 24 hours less. Yeah. And I think thinking about death, too, is such a great,

can be a motivator and helps you to give less fucks. It's truth. Because we had a show come out. Oh, yeah, we're going deep. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to die.

I'm gonna die almost certain but like it's it's a like we had a show come out and it's like you get so consistent in your like ego you know because you're like thinking about yeah how's it gonna perform yeah how's it gonna perform are people gonna think if it doesn't do well are they gonna think I'm a loser all that kind of then you think well I'm gonna die one day yeah what does it matter yeah so i think i just think it's thinking about i think the stoics do that they think about death and it's like all the time it's very freeing yeah you just want to stoke induce it put the clip in that machine gun and just pin that trigger and just let him out into the air just think about

dying and bullets yeah think about dying think about dying kisses yeah bullets of love yeah think about dying makes me more stoked yeah yeah yeah to live yeah there we go uh all right so maybe we should end with uh we do of the weeks but we're trying to mix them up right now all right do you have a song of the week that's really banging for you Yeah Can you Can you get him his guitar? So

I would've I would've said that That Oliver song That went super viral Yeah I would've said that But now it's too like I don't wanna get

Yeah I don't wanna get I don't wanna get all I just I did I listened to that song It's fucking good The song's good Yeah

But I'll play you a different song That I've been jamming on this week Hell yeah Do you have one doggy? I'll play you a different song that I've been jamming on this week. Hell. Yeah Do you have one doggy? I think Here it is It's like classical. Texture. Come on. Oh, dude. Yeah.

This is Jay-Z, Rihanna, and E.S. Posthumous. E.S. Posthumous. And that's the dude who threw it together? Yeah. That's the man. Dude. Do you have yours? I can go.

I mean, I'm just really psyched on this artist peggy goo okay peggy goo no i love peggy goo peggy goo peggy goo all right she's a korean dj and she's she's big in europe right now i think she's breaking into huge in germany like that's the dream but i um so i already i already talked about one song na Na Na Na, on another podcast, but I'll do Starry Night, just because I'm psyched on Peggy Goo. I'm going to do Na Na Na.

Yeah, do what you feel, baby. I'm going to do Na Na Na. Baby, what's going to get us feeling? You do one of these as you're walking in? People are responding. The sunglasses? People are responding. They're pulling your back.

They're like, yeah, you got it. He knows. You rip your shirt off. This is my day. This is going to be my day. It's very gentle. That's what I like about it. Four children come up to your heels and lift you up like toddlers.

Strong toddlers. Four. And toddlers know the truth. Dude, the strength of body ratio for toddlers. They're like hands. They're like hands. He doesn't need them, dude. This guy looks good.

Yeah. All right, I'm going to go with Good Charlotte, The River. Oh, yeah. Yeah, epic. Kind of LA song. I love Good Charlotte. Dude, see, here's the thing about Good Charlotte. They actually kind of go hard, but people don't know.

Because they went soft. And then once you go soft, people forget you can go hard. They brand you. They associate you. They want you to be one thing. Is this new no this is like 16 years old so yeah it feels new though do the valley of the shadow of that i was listening to this at the gym and i was like dude i'm just a guy in la going for it did the people at the gym could see my energy i was like yeah i'm in it i'm in it bro i'm feeling things and you got so at the gym could see my energy? I was like, yeah, I'm in it, dude. I'm in it, bro.

I'm feeling things. And you got, so at the gym, you're just getting up nods. I'm getting a lot of up, and dude, an up nod is way, dude, that's such a good call that it's an up nod, not a down nod. Oh, no. Down nod's a little bit like slow down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Up nod's like, that's what's up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, here comes the chorus. Dude, you went all the way. Dude, I loved it. And that's the thing about the gym, too. I was going to say chorus. You went all the way. Dude, I loved it. And that's the thing about the gym too. I was going to say this. You must have noticed this. The gym, demographically, it's all races, all ages, all people.

When I go to 24 Hour in North Hollywood, the spread is insane. You know what's cool? The iron doesn't care. We're all brothers under the iron. Like 500 pounds is 500 pounds. This is what it is. That's the title of this podcast. Sweet, man.

Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you guys. It's such a pleasure, man. It was really fun. Appreciate you guys. Thank you. I felt like we really cooked with gasoline. That was nice.

Oh, nice. Okay. That's the preheat, and then we switched right to the charcoal, maybe a wood plank. Okay, tell me about it. Get a little cedar going, some aromatics. Let it simmer yeah freaking traeger dude yeah such a pleasure man thank you it's mutual thank you guys for having me

sweet hope we went deep enough i think so dude okay that might have been the deepest we ever gone Yeah, we covered a ton. Happy friends beside you Going deep Going deep Let's go deep I'm going deep I'm going deep