Good Life Project - The Minimalists: Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Episode Date: July 6, 2016

Imagine having just about everything you wanted – a great job, making a lot of money, being able to get as much “stuff” as you want – and then, ending up miserable. That’s the plight of today’s guests, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, also known as The Minimalists.What started as an awakening to a different way of life, built around value, rather than accumulation, has now grow into a blog with millions of readers at TheMinimalists.com, a popular Minimalism, book a top-rated podcast and now a fantastic new documentary called Minimalism.This week’s conversation goes deep into Ryan and Joshua’s journey, both personally and as friends, into the exploration of what Minimalism really is and is not and how it can change not only your life, but life as we know it.In This Episode, You'll Learn:Why minimalism is not actually about giving everything up.Ryan and Joshua’s 5th-grade “fat kid bond” that launched their 20+ year-long friendship.How Ryan came up with the "$50,000 Equation" that would (theoretically) help them reach their dreams and set them free.Why reaching that goal made him completely miserable and caused him to lose sight of what life is all about.Joshua’s epiphany after his mother’s tragic passing that set him on the path to minimalism.The true benefits of minimalism (they're not what you think).How Joshua’s 21-day downsizing journey led to creating TheMinimalists.com.How Ryan and Joshua’s brand expanded to different mediums to spread their message.How they define value that an item may add to their lives.Ryan and Joshua’s process for choosing which projects they should take on at any given time.Mentioned in This Episode:Connect with Ryan and Joshua: www.TheMinimalists.com | podcast | documentaryMinimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan NicodemusEverything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan NicodemusClutterfree with Kids: Change your thinking. Discover new habits. Free your home. by Joshua BeckerExile Lifestyle, by Colin WrightBecoming Minimalist by Joshua BeckerBe More with Less by Courtney Carver Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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for three and a half days of learning and laughing and moving your body and calming your brain and reconnecting with people who just see the world the way that you do and accept you completely as you are. So that's what we've created with our Camp Good Life Project or Camp GLP experience. We've actually brought together a lineup of really inspiring teachers from art to entrepreneurship, from writing to meditation, pretty much everything in between. It's this beautiful way to fill your noggin with ideas to live and work better, and a really rare opportunity to create the type of friendships and stories you pretty much thought you'd left behind decades ago.

It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and we're well on our way to selling out spots at this point. So be sure to grab your spot as soon as you can if it's interesting to you. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. It's funny because a lot of people, when they hear minimalism or simplicity, they think easy.

They think that simple somehow equals easy. And it isn't easy necessarily. It takes a lot of work to live deliberately and to make decisions that align with your values and beliefs. Imagine getting pretty much everything you wanted. Great job making a lot of money, being able to get as much stuff as you want and then ending up miserable. Well, that's the plight of today's guests, Joshua Fields Milburn and his best friend since fifth grade, Ryan Nicodemus, also known as The Minimalist. They have grown in popularity over the last six years with millions of readers writing a really super popular and super useful website, publishing a book, and now a really fantastic documentary by the same name, all about minimalism. Today's conversation goes deep

into their journey, both personally and as friends, and then in their individual and then joint explorations of this thing called minimalism. And then we do a whole bunch of, you know, sort of myth busting to get into what minimalism is and what it isn't and how you can actually live in a very real way in the world with other people around other people who don't adopt the same ethos, and how you don't have to actually give up everything that you ever wanted to actually benefit from this concept of minimalism. Really excited to share this conversation with you. It got me thinking a lot and thinking about what matters and from people to stuff to things to activities. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

So it's kind of fun to be hanging out with you guys right now also because we're hanging out in our little HQ in New York City. You're rolling off the air from big public radio and on this really cool launch of a documentary, which I view as just really left me thinking big time. We'll get into that a lot. So many questions for you. So I'm trying to figure out the best place to start. First, you guys have what seems to be a pretty astonishing friendship. Right? And you talk about the fact that you've been friends for 20-something years. Yeah.

Since we were fat little fifth graders, man. Is that what it was? You were like rocking fifth grade together? Yeah, man. I moved in with my dad in the fifth grade and started a new school. And I was used to being like the fattest kid in my class. And I walked into the fifth grade classroom and i'm like oh my god there's a fatter kid than me so that was that was the bonding moment yeah we bonded over cheese fries and and cheeseburgers and yeah other cheese

related products dude we literally would like stop after school and we would get a double cheeseburger as a snack before we went home. Yeah, we weren't. So we grew up in Dayton, Ohio. It was a weird sort of situation for us because we grew up relatively poor in different parts of town. But we didn't have a lot of money. So there was a lot of discontent growing up. And I remember, so Ryan and I were friends all throughout high school. And I remember being at Ryan and I were friends all throughout high school. And I remember

being at the senior lunch table and it was kind of lonely because it was me and him. And he came up with this equation of how we could be happy if we could just make $50,000 a year, because that's a number none of our parents had ever made. It's a lot of cheeseburgers. Especially in Dayton, Ohio, right? And so, if we could just make $50,000 a year, then we could be happy. It's this weird if-then equation as if there's a magical number. And so, I said, yeah, that sounds interesting. And that sounds right to me for whatever reason. It seems so unattainable because I grew up on welfare, government assistance, and food stamps, and a place where

there was a lot of drugs and alcohol and a lot of discontent. And so realizing there was a way out of it, I thought, you know, maybe it just had to do with money. And so, of course, I went and got a sales job when I was 18. I didn't do the whole college route, right? And I pretty quickly made it to $50,000. By age 19, I was making 50 grand a year, but I was spending 65 grand a year. And so the first time in my life I started experiencing debt. And I said, well, I went back to Ryan and I said, maybe this equation, this $50,000 a year thing wasn't right. Maybe we forgot to adjust for inflation, right? And so maybe it's 65,000, maybe it's 80,000, whatever

the number was, I felt like I was chasing happiness all throughout my twenties. And Ryan, you know, thankfully chased it with me. Yeah. So what was going on with you, Ryan, at that point? Yeah. So it's funny when I first heard that Josh was making 65,000 bucks a year, I thought he was lying because at the time I was working for my dad and we were just, he has, he's got a small painting and wallpaper business. So we were, we were always in these like really affluent homes and had crazy things like, you know, indoor bowling alleys, indoor pools, things that seemed like would, it would be really nice to have not things that I necessarily aspired to have, but, uh, but yeah, always, always around some kind of affluence. So when I talked to Josh and he's like, yeah, make it 65 grand a year.

I'm like, what are you doing, man? He's like, selling cell phones. I'm like, you can make that much money off of selling cell phones? And he's like, yeah. So I jumped on board with the cell phone train and we went and worked in telecom and we both started, you know, accumulating our masses. Yeah. I'm curious, though,, it's really fascinating. So I know you guys have done a whole bunch of research on happiness and, you know, there's this really

interesting science around the fact that our moment to moment happiness for so many of us is determined relative to those we're surrounded by. So you coming up in a space where like the way that you and your dad earned a living surrounded you by, it sounds like a pretty extraordinary wealth. How else did that sort of seep into you? Well, that's really where the $50,000 equation came from. We were in this home that was ostensibly the family looked really, really happy, right? Like the pictures, the family photos on the wall, the house was really, really nice.

Everyone's smiling in the pictures. Yeah, right. I mean, the house was really, really nice. Everyone's smiling in the pictures. Yeah, right. I mean, it looked like this very- Photoshop. Right. Turn that front upside down in Photoshop. Yeah. And I looked at my dad and I'm like, dad, this is a really nice house.

It looks like something that maybe I could afford one day if I worked really, really hard. How much do I have to make to own a house like this? And he's like, son, if you can make 50 grand a year, you could probably have a house like this. So that is where that equation came from. But yeah, certainly growing up with that. And it wasn't just growing up in those homes and around all that affluence, but it seemed like we were always moving from fixer-upper to fixer-upper. And when I think of a fixer-upper now, it makes me miserable because like I grew up always having like some type of project to do around the house. Not just a small project, but like major projects that I would have to help my dad on. Like you don't have a toilet this week.

Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, growing up in that situation, I just really went out of my way to not put myself in that situation as an adult. When I have kids, I didn't want to put them in that situation as an adult to not uh and when i have kids i don't i didn't want to put them through that situation yeah and at the same time josh you were um josh or joshua either my mom called me both so i call him millie so anything man whatever it is i'll come so at the same time you're going up in the house and you've been very transparent about the fact that your mom had some real struggles with addiction. Yeah. Yeah, she did. And I initially associated

the discontent with the lack of money because we were poor. But then, of course, when I got into my 20s and started making money, I still didn't feel fulfilled or a sense of purpose or joy in what I was doing. And it turns out that that satisfaction that I was chasing or didn't have as a kid translated to the money side as well, because we were making repeated bad decisions as I was growing up. And that's where the dissatisfaction came from. My short-term actions or our short-term actions or what I saw with my mother, her short-term actions weren't in line with her long-term values. They weren't in line with who she wanted to be as a person.

She was a good person, but her actions didn't betray that. And so I sort of went down a similar path, not in terms of alcoholism, but in terms of making ephemeral short-term decisions that didn't serve any sort of long-term values. And so that discontent continued and the money just allowed me to multiply that discontent actually, because now that I was making more money, I was able to sort of act on impulse more impulsively. And I realized that, you know, by my late 20s that I was ostensibly successful, right? Living this meme we've been sold of the American dream, six-figure salary, a big house with more bedrooms than people.

White picket fence. Literally, a literal white picket fence. And all the things that were supposed to make me happy, the trinkets of success. But instead of that successful feeling, that satisfied feeling, I had debt, I had stress. I had anxiety. I had discontent. My health was in shambles. I weighed 80 pounds more than I weigh now. And I forsook the people closest to me because I was working 70 or 80 hours a week and so focused on so-called achievement that I had lost sight of what's this life about really.

Did you ever have sight of it to start with, to lose? Did I have any what? Did you ever have sight to start with? Like you said, it's interesting, like when you say you lost sight of it, like curiosity is, did you start with that sight? I think I got to a point where I had the sight of the wrong things, right? I assumed certain things were going to make me happy. If I achieve X, then Y, whether it was the $50,000 or the first Lexus that I bought

or the second Lexus that I bought, you know, the, the, these things were supposed to make me happy. So I had sight of what I thought was happiness, but, but the, the closer I thought I got to happiness, the farther away it was in a weird way. And, and so I realized that I needed to, I guess, pivot from constantly chasing happiness. And maybe the happiness wasn't the point. Maybe the point was finding something that was meaningful and then happiness was a byproduct of that. I so agree with that approach. So what's going on with you, Ryan, then?

Because Josh was making it, quote, and Eric was making it, right? And he was like, dude, come, let's do this together. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Josh hired me as a just frontline salesman at his store. So he was, he was a manager at the time. And I just remember when I got to that role, it was amazing. Like how much, you know, commission I realized I could earn, but then I saw, you know, Josh in this management position and, you know, kind of this prestige that came along with that title. So right away, I started climbing the corporate ladder right along with him. And it's funny. We both grew up with mothers who had substance abuse problems.

And Josh, thank God that he kind of saw that example and was like, that is not a path that I want to take. Where when I saw my mom doing that stuff, it looked like fun. Like that's how she had fun. So I did go the drugs and alcohol route. So when I was in the corporate world, it was literally working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. And then in my free time, it was going out to the bar and, you know, racking up the biggest bar tab that I could bring in my employees out, you know, showing them a good time. It was about, you know, going out and having as many ephemeral pleasures as I could in my spare

time, because that's the only way, like I really knew how to unwind. Well, as most people know, and most drug addicts know that those stop working after a while, eventually you just take those things to feel normal. And I just remember being at a point in my life where I'm sitting in my, you know, 2000 square foot condo, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living rooms. I don't know why I ever thought I would need two living rooms. And I was sitting there feeling like I was, I was being ungrateful because I was in this miserable situation. And I remember seeing Josh, uh, after, uh, his, his mom had passed away and his marriage ended both in the same month. It was a few months after that where I noticed a significant difference in

him. The first thing I noticed was actually right when he was moving out of his place into his apartment, he had this nice TV mount on the wall. And I remember thinking like, wow, man, I wonder how big of a TV Josh is going to get. I mean, that was like, uh, something that we always kind of went back and forth with like, Oh, check out this TV. I go check out the TV I got. And so I asked him, I'm like, Oh, what kind of TV are you going to put up there, man? And he's like, you know, I haven't really decided yet. I don't even know if I am going to get a TV. And six months later, still no TV. And, uh, it's not like he came out, you know, and said, Hey man, I'm a minimalist. This is why I'm not getting a TV. but but you got the mount no no it was in the apartment yeah it came with it

i just need the mount i'm good every minimalist has to have a tv mount right exactly it's sort of like minimal requirement it's a metaphor right yeah so there's like this perfect spot just like a picture frame around it with nothing in it. Just project what you want to see there. Make a movie in your mind. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, this perfect spot for TV that he wasn't using. The next thing I noticed with him was he started talking to our boss differently. So in our company, you were meant to work every hour that you could possibly put in.

We literally work 362 days a year. So I was at my Zenith or Nadir, depending on how you look at it. I was director of operations for 150 retail stores, which I know now is really ironic with the whole minimalism thing, right? But again, it was that achievement, that success. I was 27 years old, youngest director on our company's 140-year history. And that sounds like you've reached a level of success, but really I was reaching a level where I did nothing but work. My head got off the pillow, it was on my BlackBerry, but my head was hitting the pillow at night, 11 or 12 at night, still typing out on that BlackBerry and

responding to emails. And it was this incessant busyness that wasn't, it aped the form of productivity, but wasn't actually productive at all. Yeah. Constantly on call. My stepfather, he was in heating and air. And I remember he would be on call like on certain weekends. I mean, we were on call every single weekend. So our job, it was, you were meant to work yourself to death, essentially. I mean, there were 30 year old men having heart attacks, um, in our, in our office, uh, because of the stress that we were put under. In fact, if you were to take all of your vacation days, you were looked at like you were lazy, like, you know, Hey, where's so-and-so, uh, Oh, they're on vacation. They're trying to get, you know, their last vacation days and, Oh, are they going on a trip? No, they're just trying

to get their vacation days in and then they would be, you know, patronized for it. And that was the thing, too, where it was these weird passive aggressive things like, oh, he went he went on vacation. He went to Mexico for a month or for a month for a week or five days or something. Oh, must be nice. And this busyness was a in and of itself was a status symbol in a way where I can outwork you. Whoever was the first into the office last to leave. These were supposed to be, I guess, benchmarks of success. So Josh started setting these expectations with our boss about, hey, you know what? Trying to get a hold of me past 7 o'clock at night or 8 o'clock at night, it's not really reasonable.

Expecting me to return an email at midnight and then wake up at 6am and respond to another email is not reasonable. And that was like sacrilegious in our company and noticing these things with Josh. I'm like, well, I know he's doing something different. I know that he is getting over these tragic events that have happened. So I eventually asked him to lunch and we went to a really, really nice restaurant subway and sat down and I asked him, but why the hell are you so happy? And that's where minimalism was introduced to me. He talked about how he spent the last several months paring down on his items to make room for life's more important things. And it made sense to me.

I was like, oh, yeah, the less I own, if I get rid of this condo, get rid of this payment, I don't have to work 70 hours a week. Oh, and if I get rid of this nice luxury car, I won't have to make that payment. And maybe I won't have to work 70 hours a week. And my mind really started going towards like getting down to a lifestyle where I could live off of, you know, 25, 30,000 bucks a year, go be a barista somewhere. I just really wanted to get my time back. That was, which was what was so appealing to me. So I jumped on board. I'm like, all right, man, I want to be a minimalist. What should I do? Right. So Josh, part of the curiosity here for me. So, and Ryan referenced that, you know, within the same month, your mom passed and you're divorced or you ended up, your marriage fell apart.

Right. What led to each of those? I mean, obviously your mom had, your mom passed from cancer. Yeah, she did. So, it was late, no, it was 2008. So, I was 27 years old and at this height of success. And then I get this phone call. My mom had just moved from Ohio down to

Florida to finally retire. Because that's what you do when you live in Ohio, you move to Florida. That's what you do when you're in New York too. Yeah. There's a lot of New Yorkers in Ohio and in Florida. We call it affectionately the second Buckeye state. But yeah, so she moved down there. And a few months after she moved down, she found out she had lung cancer, stage four. And I spent a lot of time with her over the course of the next year. She went through chemo and radiation and she just kept getting weaker and weaker. And eventually she passed and I had to make one last trip after she died. And it was just to deal with her stuff. And so I walked into her tiny one-bedroom apartment. It was crammed with about three apartments worth of stuff, right?

And it's not like my mom was a hoarder, right? There were no like dead cats in her freezer or anything. But she owned a lot of stuff. She had 65 years worth of accumulation. So she died relatively young. But I was going through all of the stuff and learned a lot of really important lessons as I was going through just her things. I walked in her kitchen and it was stuffed with all these plates and cups and bowls and ill-assorted utensils. I'd go into her linen closet and it was stuffed with mismatched bath towels and beach towels and dish towels and bed sheets and blankets and quilts.

And it looked like someone was running a hotel out of her bathroom, which had all these like beauty products. And then I got to her bedroom closet and I found 14 winter coats in her bedroom closet. Some of them still had the price tags on it. And now keep in mind, she lived in St. Pete Beach, Florida. You don't need one winter coat in St. Pete Beach, Florida, maybe one. And I just thought to myself, why was mom holding on to all this stuff? And so I did what any good son would do. I called U-Haul and I rented the largest truck I could get. In fact, I had to wait an extra day for the 26-foot truck to be available.

And then I called up a storage locker back in Ohio, and I rented the largest storage unit they had. And when I called, they asked me if I wanted one that was climate-controlled. And I said, what do you mean? Like, is that so mom's stuff could be comfortable? No, I just want a big box with a padlock on it, you know, just in case I need it someday and some non-existent hypothetical future. I'm just going to store this away because I couldn't commingle mom's stuff with my stuff. I already had a big house and a full basement full of stuff, but a storage locker would let me hold on to everything just in case.

And many years later, I found out that just in case are kind of the three most dangerous words that we have in our English language. That's why I had seven drunk drawers. Yeah. And so, as I was packing all this stuff up, waiting for the U-Haul to arrive, I found these four boxes under her bed. And it sounds like a bad mystery novel now, but they were just labeled one, two, three, four.

These old printer paper boxes are kind of heavy. They're sealed with excessive amounts of packing tape. And so, I pulled them out one by one. And I looked at each box. I stood there and just wondered what could possibly be in these boxes, right? And it was my old elementary school paperwork, grades one through four, right? And I thought to myself, why was mom holding on to this stupid paperwork? But then as I opened the boxes, of course, all the memories, they came rushing back to me, right? And you start remembering stuff that you didn't even know you remembered.

And I thought, oh, she was holding on to a piece of me. But then I thought to myself, well, wait a minute, like these boxes have been sealed for more than two decades. Clearly, she hadn't accessed any of the memories in those boxes. And it made me realize something really important for the first time is that our memories aren't in our things. Our memories are inside us. And they always will be. And mom didn't need to hold on to those boxes to hold on to a piece of me. I was never inside those boxes.

But then I looked around at all her stuff and realized that, you know, I was getting ready to do the same thing. Except instead of putting her stuff in a box under my bed, I was going to put it into a great big box with a padlock on it just in case. And so I called up U-Haul and I canceled the truck and I called the storage locker and canceled that. And I spent the next 12 days selling or donating pretty much everything and learned a lot of lessons along the way, but really finding

the stuff a new home. Because if I'm honest with myself, I was just going to selfishly cling to a lot of that stuff. And I wasn't going to get any real value from it. But by letting go of it, I could find it a new home. And other people actually would be able to get value from some of the stuff's nice stuff, big antique furniture and all of her years of accumulation it's not like you know she had a lot of doilies and i'm not going to use the doilies but maybe someone else will right and so by letting go it was it was really difficult and i don't want to minimize that experience in terms of it was it was hard to do but it made me realize and when i got back that I had to sort of look inward, you know, look myself in the mirror, so to speak, and take an inventory of my own life. And, you know, I

realized that I was living an organized life, but really I was a well-organized hoarder, right? The average American household has 300,000 items in it. The LA Times wrote about this recently, so 300,000. But most of us aren't hoarders either. We just hold on to a lot of stuff. And I did a good job organizing it so I didn't look like a hoarder. Everything was in boxes and bins and I had an ordinal system to hide all this clutter away. But the truth is, I wasn't getting much value from just about any of it. I was getting value from some of my things, but I didn't, I didn't know what. And so for me, I stumbled across this thing called minimalism and realized there were all these different minimalists, minimalist families, minimalist architecture,

minimalist literature. And my version of minimalism, my minimalist lifestyle would probably look different from these other people. So we have have shared friend Leo Babalta and he has six kids. And so, that version of minimalism wouldn't necessarily work for me. And then there's a guy Colin Wright who is a world traveler and everything he owns fits in his backpack, which I admire, but I don't want that lifestyle either necessarily. And so, I started looking at all these different minimalists and tweezing ingredients from their recipes and sort of created my own recipe for minimalism. And it started with the question, how might your life be better with less? And I think by asking that question, I was able to identify what the benefits of minimalism are, which I think is a lot more important than just decluttering your closet.

Like I think we all know intrinsically if I were to tell you to go declutter your closet, you'd figure out pretty quickly how to do that. But if we don't know the why behind it, then we quickly lose sight or we don't have the leverage to maintain the what, to maintain the action. So for me, it was getting back control of my finances. I made really good money, but spent even better money. So I was in debt, right? Regained control of my health, my relationships, and regain control of my time so that I could live more deliberately. And so I, over the course of eight months, kept asking this other question, does this add value to my life? And I looked at all of my stuff and realized that about over the course of eight months, about 90% of it wasn't adding much value

to my life, right? I'd ask that question, be really honest with myself. And then the weird paradox is I let go of that stuff. The things I do own now, they do bring me much more value because I don't have all the other stuff in the way. So as a minimalist, everything I own serves a purpose or it brings me joy and everything else is out of the way. So was that eight month window, was that the eight months leading up to when your mom passed or was it right after? It was right after. It was right after. Yeah, it was. I think that accidental journey of minimalism with letting go of her stuff was-

The inciting incident for- Yeah, it really was. And only in the rear view did I realize that. At the moment, I realized, okay, some things need to change in my life, but I don't know what. And that's what led me to minimalism. Yeah. So, and you talked about the benefits of Ryan, I'm curious, like, as being really important to understand. So take me into that a little bit. Well, so my journey with minimalism, it started with a packing party where Josh and I literally

packed up everything in my apartment to act like I was moving. So we were pretending like I was moving. I was unpacking things day by day for three weeks. And at the end of that experiment, I had 80% of my stuff left in boxes and sitting there looking at those boxes, I really started to think about, you know, what my priorities were. You know, we all say what our priorities are. Like if you were to go up to some random person on the street and say, Hey, what are your priorities? They might say, Oh, well, my health, that's a priority. My family, that's a priority or that, that big passion project that I've been putting off for a year. That's my priority, but our priorities are what we actually do. And when I was sitting there faced with all that stuff, I thought, man, like here's thousands

and thousands of dollars worth of stuff that I have purchased to bring me happy. It's not doing its job. And I have put off so many important relationships in my life. Like my mother lived about a half hour away from me. I saw her maybe six or seven times a year, like major holidays, Mother's Day, and that was it. And I started to think like, wow, if I could get my time back, I can start to focus more on my mom's relationship because that was really important to me. Not only that, but my father, same situation, lived a half hour away. So for me, those benefits include

regaining control of my relationships, regaining control of my relationships, regaining control of my health, actually making my priorities, my actual priorities and then helping me act on those. But yeah, it's too often that we say our health is our priority, but we are going, you know, I would go through fast food joint because it was the easy thing to do. Or, you know, I'm like on the, on my way home from a bender and I'm like munching and, you know, stop and get, you know, a couple of Big Macs and eat. And it was ruining my health. But when I started to ask those important questions and really started to try to live as deliberately as possible, it really helped me to regain control of my health. My relationships helped me to cultivate more passions. And now ultimately, I mean, Josh and I

have grown tremendously over the last six years, but we've been able to contribute to other people. And that's really what has been the most important to me. I mean, you know, the saying giving is living, and I absolutely agree with that. So now I'm able to give as much as I can. And actually, I want to circle back to that and dive into it. Let's fill in the story a little bit more, though. So you guys basically start on this journey together, inspired in part by Josh's mom passing, and then a deep dive into minimalism. And then you saying, something's a little bit different here.

And then there's the packing party. And you guys start to ride this train together. And it sounds like your lives individually are really starting to change. At some point though, you, one or both of you make the decision that, hey, this is really interesting. If it's interesting for us and it's making a difference, maybe it'd be interesting for other people. So, and you decide to start sharing what's going on. So take me into that a little bit. I had written fiction most of my 20s. And so that was really what I was passionate about. Didn't have much time to do it, but anytime I had a free hour, I was really interested in literature. And so I wanted to

write. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be an author. I wanted to write novels. That was my thing. And about a month after Ryan's packing party, he came to me and said, you know, you're pretty good at writing. My only experience with nonfiction up to that point was like really vapid corporate emails. But I had no experience in terms of crafting some sort of nonfiction narrative. But he said, I think some people might find value in this story. And I think we could share it and at least write about this packing party. He had been doing some journaling through those 21 days and he showed me that. And that was actually the impetus of starting them in lists.com was that 21 day journey. We just

kind of put it up there. And I wrote a few other things about my journey of sort of looking back at the year prior. And that was about it. And, you know, I remember the, we figured out how to look at traffic eventually. We didn't know what a blog, in fact, we called a website at first, we didn't know what a blog was. And I was trying to like code HTML. I was totally clueless and ignorant to the whole genre. And as we started sharing the story, we figured out how to check traffic. And 52 people visited our website in the first month. And I remember that was the most amazing feeling to me because you had to think, I was 30 years old at the time. And everyone who had read my stuff throughout my 20s were just publishers and agents who told me no. And so these were 52 people who were at least in some way saying yes, they showed up.

And then 52 people turned into 500 and 5,000 and last year it was over 5 million. And what we realized, if you add value to someone's life, I don't know about you, but when you come across a really great article or you come across a movie you you really found value and you want to share with people you care about you want to add value to their lives as well and i this thing that started as a a project that was just let's put this out in the world and see if anyone gets value from it turned into a totally different path for us to go out there and and start this it's more of a multimedia journey now with whether it's the podcast the documentary or the books yeah so you start out as a writer so for you also this is okay there's a particular topic well it sounds like there are

three drives and tell me if i'm not zeroing in one is you're fascinated by this topic because it's making a real difference in people's lives you You're like, hey, cool, let me share it. Two, there's this thing you wanted to do. There's a craft that you wanted to do for a long time. You're like, huh, this is actually may give me something interesting to like hone the craft and share that and spend more time doing it. And also, sounds like probably a big motivation was like you guys are besties since fifth grade. And like you're doing something together, which is, I mean, what's better than that. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. No, it was when we started the whole website, it was, yeah, it was definitely something that we really enjoyed working on together and kind of writing back, writing stuff back and forth and sending it to each other. And

you know, Josh has always like loved writing since high school. I remember him, I would complain about all the homework and the writing projects. And Josh would be like, that's my favorite class, man. I was more like a math and physics guy, but he really kind of helped me with writing and still does help me with writing. But yeah, there certainly is a symbiotic relationship that we have that really makes this thing great. But I think that perspective from these two suit and tie corporate guys who are, you know, best friends that those journeys from that to minimalism, I think that's what really resonates with people. And that's what I really saw after the packing party. I was like, man, like, you know, I'm looking at Leo's side, I'm looking at Colin Wright's side, Joshua Becker's side, Courtney

Carver's side, and they all had unique stories. And I'm like, dude, we have a unique story. Like, and I really, you know, Leo, especially I'm looking up to him, like, wow, look at the. Right. Like married six kids. Okay. There's, there's a zero. When you look at, when you look at Leo, like any excuse you try and come up with is just like out the window. He was, he, he asked us about, about this early on. He said, is there anything that I can do to help you guys? I said, can you just write an essay about that that would resonate for our audience? And he wrote an essay called No Excuses, Minimalism with Six Kids. And to me, that is the perfect combination of non-minimalism and defying the odds, I guess you could say.

Because a lot of people ask, how can I become minimalist because I have two kids or whatever? And it's like, well, here's an example for you. Or you look at Joshua Becker as a book called Clutter Free with Kids. And that's another example. But back to your point about the writing, I think for me it started with the writing. Like I said, I really wanted to be a fiction author. And then we did this and we wrote a book together, our first book called Minimalism. And from there I became more, I guess, vehicle agnostic. Because for the longest time, I just wanted to write. I just want to be a writer and

writers write books. And that's all they do. And books, I'll enjoy reading. And I'm just going to write books. And then it's like, but there's a website. And oh, it's a blog. Okay, that's still a way to write. But then from there, there are other ways to communicate. And what I realized, not everyone reads a book. Three of the 50% of adult males in America finish one book a year. It's scary stats. I know. And I think that's just, it's going to be getting less and less really fast. Absolutely.

And so I can choose to be a curmudgeon and continue to go down the path of just wanting to be an author. Or if I really believe that people are getting value from this message, we can find other ways to communicate it. And so that bled over into social media. And I would still argue we're not very good at social media right now. But we also don't share pictures of our pancake breakfast or anything. Just because I'm still asking that question. If I send a tweet, is this going to add value to someone else's life? Are they going to laugh?

Are they going to find it informative? Whatever. And so social media is another platform. Or doing video. Or now we do a podcast or with the documentary. These are all different vehicles that not everyone who's going to read the book is going to watch the documentary. Not everyone who listens to the podcast is going to look at the blog as well. And so what is the best way to communicate to a particular individual? And then just trying to make it the best quality as possible. But also, I don't know if you've experienced this, but hopping into doing the whole podcast thing recently, I mean,

we've tried really hard on working on the podcast, but I'm not nearly as good at talking extemporaneously as I am. If you give me a week to write an essay, it is far more polished than just sitting down and maundering. Yeah, I hear that pain also. And it's funny because we do, we keep experimenting with formats. And so right now we're at three times a week and that may shift also. Actually, by the time you guys hear this, that may have shifted.

But one of those formats is these like 10 to 15 minute short riffs, which is me talking into a mic, which- I love the one about surfing recently. Yeah, thank you. So what's interesting is that, is that that's actually my least favorite thing to do in part because I always feel really weird being the guy who's just sitting there saying, this is what I know. I'm much more comfortable just having conversations

with people who have great stories to tell and have figured stuff out. That's where I feel really good. And the other thing is, like you, I still consider my primary medium writing. And if you give me a week to write an essay about a topic, so like the one you just referenced on surfing was actually an essay that I published a few years ago that I just kind of tweaked a little bit and then read as a riff. So I struggle with that same thing on a regular basis

because I'm trying to figure out, okay, what makes me happy? You know, like everyone's so focused on product market fit, but what's offering value, that value question that you threw out, right? What's going to be a value to other people? And that's so focused on product market fit, but what's offering value, that value question that you threw out, right? What's going to be a value to other people? And that's so important because you can't actually do this. You can't call it a profession.

You can't actually sustain yourself if it doesn't. The flip side is for me, I'm really focused also on product maker fit. Like what's giving me value and giving them value? Like what do I love to do? So we're working on the format also in the form of expression and i'm constantly trying to balance i actually don't have the answer yet but it's interesting to hear that you're sort of like exploring the same thing i feel like it's about for me it's been about growth it's been a great growth experience like trying like we in 2014 we did a crazy 100 city tour with our book everything that remains and basically donate a

year of our lives all the events were free we did 119 events in eight countries and we got what those are three things that i hate travel crowds of people and public and public speaking right let me just get them all done with now and here and the truth is not that i hate them as they make me uncomfortable right and so well what's the best way to get better at something is to put yourself in that discomfort zone. And I find that's a place from which I grow. And the more I grow, the more I can kind of contribute in a different way. And so, yeah, I totally agree with you that as I'm trying new things or these new formats, I don't necessarily have the answer. You mentioned the product maker fit.

And I think that, well, anything that we do is meant to be especially with writing in particular it's supposed to be expressive for sure but but it's also supposed to be communicative in a way if it's going out to someone else i mean we were just on the subway on the way here and and there was a person sort of yelling at the wall and that didn't require an audience at all right that is that is people in that person's mind there might have been an audience at all, right? That is pure expression. Even in that person's mind, there might have been an audience in front of that person. That's true. But whether I'm there or not, that is happening. And then there's the other side of it where there's just communication. A calculus textbook is sort of the supreme example of that, where you don't dream of curling up next to the fire and reading from a calculus textbook,

because it is purely communicative. And I think if it's adding value to others but it's also right for the maker of it, then you're marrying the expressive communication and the communicative communication in a way that is valuable to you and valuable to other people. Yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. I want to sit with that a little bit more. Okay. Yeah. So you're still this tremendous community. You're sharing a lot of your stories and what you're learning. And this word value keeps coming back also. And it seems like the big question you constantly ask when you're looking at, am I going to do this? Am I going to get this? Is it genuinely of value to me. Yeah. Does it serve a purpose or does it bring me joy? Because it doesn't have to be purely utilitarian, right? It's not just serving a purpose in my life. Although most of the things

that I own do have some sort of function, my clothes, my car. I live in Montana. If I lived in New York City, a car may not augment my experience. It may actually get in the way of my experience if I'm trying to drive from here to here and pay $65 every afternoon to park. So the question is, does it add value to my life in this particular situation? And that changes over time too. As I, you know, I'm 34 years old right now and what adds value to my 34-year-old self may not add value to my 45-year-old self. And so it's really about constantly asking that question. Does it serve a purpose but, does it bring me joy? A nice piece of artwork doesn't necessarily serve a function as much as it is beautiful and it brings me joy in a different way, the aesthetic pleasure.

And I think that's one of the big misconceptions about minimalism also is that the primary focus is just get rid of as much stuff as you can possibly get rid of. Like it's about shed, shed, shed, shed, shed. And, but that's not, it's not really what you guys are about. No, it's funny. We were on Periscope a couple of weeks ago and someone had commented, you know, listening to you guys, it doesn't sound like you really got rid of anything important. And I would agree with him. We didn't get rid of anything important. We kept only the things that were important to us. And yeah, it is unfortunately a giant misconception because anyone listening to this podcast, anyone in this room could go read a dumpster and throw away all their stuff. And that isn't necessarily going to equal happiness. They would just go in

their empty apartment or house and sulk. So, you know, minimalism, it's about living deliberately. And the beautiful thing is, and we've talked about it already, is the different recipes and how ingredients that work for me don't work for Josh. Yeah, a year from now, there might be something in my life that, you know, adds value today, but it might not a year from now and vice versa. So that question of constantly going back and asking, you know, is this going to add value that, that doesn't just help with the physical items that we bring into our lives, but also, um, the relationships that I focus on the, the time that I spent. I mean, we have so many other resources than money. So, you know, how am I spending my time? Where, where am I putting my

focus? It really helps me to, uh to just live the best life that I can. I'm not perfect, but I really enjoy who I am today. And I can say that, you know, I live with very little regrets right now. One of the things that you offered when we started talking, Josh, is that happiness is best experienced or pursued as a side product, which is kind of a twist on also Viktor Frankl's, you know, famous happiness should not be pursued. It must ensue.

And I'm a huge believer in that also. How much do you talk about or how much do you explore this idea of, or how do you define, you know, like when you're saying, okay, do I do this or do I not do this? How do you define value? Is it, if it's, if you're sort of saying it's not about, okay, will this make me happy? Yeah. Well, is it meaningful? Is it meaningful? Yeah. And so you have to identify. How do you know that? Well, you have to know what your values are ultimately, and not just values in terms of like what your basic needs are. I mean, I think we all have a basic set of needs

that are relatively similar, food, shelter, clothing, etc. But beyond that, what are the higher order needs in life? And I think it's health, relationships, creativity, or passion, whatever you want to call it, and then growth and giving. And whatever I'm doing, those sort of five buckets, whatever I'm doing needs to serve one or more of those. Those are my values. And if my actions align with all of those in some way, then I'm living a meaningful life. Although what I'll tell you is you can get out of balance. You can feel like you're doing a lot of that and serving your values, but maybe your health is out of whack. And so you have great relationships and you feel really creative and you're working

really hard on your passion project and maybe you feel like you're growing and but if you don't have your health you really don't have anything right and although of course health is perspectival and it's a vehicle it's not binary it's not just well you have the this person who's the paragon of health or you have this person who's utterly unhealthy it's what's the best version of my health and so i think when i when when my short-term actions align with those values, that's a life of meaning. And that tends to lead to more contentment, more happiness throughout my days and not these constant peaks and valleys of the sort of cocaine high of consumerism or the pursuit of ephemeral relationships or just pursuing something that doesn't serve any of those areas. I'm much more focused on asking that question. Does this align with my values? Does

this align with the person I want to be? I'm constantly aspiring to be my 35-year-old self, basically. Yeah. I mean, an example would be for me is, well, I have a 2004 Toyota Corolla right now. It leaks a little bit when it rains. We call it our tour bus. Sounds fancy. It's got about 300,000 miles on it. And I can't tell you, man, like as much as I avoid like magazines and TV, I mean, I still get new cars shoved in my face all the time. And every time I see one like that I like, I get that urge. I get that twitch where I'm like, man, you're debt free right now. You could totally go out and just, just take on a, you know, 300, $400 a month loan.

But ultimately when I look at making that decision, that does not align with my values and beliefs. Part of, part of my belief system is, you know, the new American dream for me is being debt free. So if I really wanted to get a new car, I would have to save for that monthly. And it's funny because a lot of people, when they hear minimalism or simplicity, they think easy. They think that simple somehow equals easy. And it isn't easy necessarily. It takes a lot of work to live deliberately and to make decisions that align with your values and beliefs. But certainly there are too many people out there right now who will, and I was definitely one of them. And like I said, I'm not perfect, man. But, you know, there's too many people out there now who will

just make an excuse to say, yeah, I know that going into this major amount of debt is going to trap me for five years, but it's really going to help me out in this, you know, right now. And it's going to make me feel good and not really realizing that, yeah, that's going to wane. That item that you buy, name of that, you know, the biggest, most current dopamine hit that you can get by buying something versus debt that's incurred by a deliberate process of this will allow me to grow in X way. This will allow me to build X, you know, I'm thinking of somebody who's makes a choice to train under, you know, you want to be a painter and you have this opportunity to thinking of somebody who makes a choice to train under – if you want to be a painter and you have this opportunity to train with somebody who you want to train with, but it will require

you to incur a certain amount of debt. I'm not necessarily sure that's the best example actually. But the idea of debt in the name of investing in something that has a reasonable likelihood of actually returning something substantial to your life. It may not be money, but in some, whatever your metric is versus debt, which lets you buy something, which gives you a hit for a moment that we habituate to fairly quickly. And then we're just like looking for the next hit. Sure. I think debt can be used as a tool. Absolutely. I don't think there's anything, there's no such thing as good debt, but I do totally agree with you. You know, if I all of a sudden wanted to be a doctor and that was like my life's purpose and I was really, really passionate about it. And it's

something that I have cultivated and was really clear on. That's the path that I wanted to take, you know, going into debt to go to school, to be a doctor, that's a decision that certainly I would understand that someone would make to take on that debt and then, you know, going into debt to go to school, to be a doctor, that's a decision that certainly I would understand that someone would make to, to take on that debt and then, you know, spend however many years paying off that, that six figure debt. But if it is ultimately driving their passion, yeah, sure. There are scenarios out there where debt can be used as a tool, but for me, I am staying out of, uh, out of debt at all costs. So going back to that new car example, you know, having the rain not drip on my head from the sunroof or, you know, having that. You'd miss that rain.

It'd be pouring. You'd be like, something's not right here, man. My hair's dry. Right. I think, while I agree with Ryan, there's no such thing as good debt. I think there's some debt that's worse than others, obviously, you know, A seven-year fixed rate

mortgage where you paid 50% down to purchase a house is much more reasonable than a payday loan at a local corner store. And even for Ryan's example with the doctor, there are plenty of doctors who have made it through university without incurring significant amount of debt. Now, that may mean you go into service of some kind for some nonprofit for an appreciable period of time. I would say quite often there are ways to avoid debt, and there's a template out there. So you just have to follow someone else's model.

Here's the path I want to go. Is there someone else anywhere in the world who followed that path but didn't accrue a bunch of debt? If so, maybe that's a recipe that I can follow. Yeah, that's a great point, actually. I had a friend who wanted to be a teacher. And so she joined the Teacher Fellows Program in New York, where essentially you get your master's in teaching paid for. And then at the time, they would go out and place you in really tough schools to sort of earn your way back. Yeah, I guess it's interesting. I think we very

often just think that that's the only way is to sort of go into debt. And so the idea of looking for a template of somebody who's done this thing that you want to do and not incur debt, and then that's a really interesting thing. When I walked away from the corporate world, it was interesting. No one believed me that I was just going to go right. And this was before the whole the minimalists thing. I was just going to work at a local coffee shop. So I went from this six-figure-a-year job and prestigious in the community. Because what's the first question you ask when you meet someone is, what do you do? What a dangerous question. And what a very narrow question, too. Well, the way we mean it is narrow, right? Because it's really an expansive question. Well, I sit in a chair. I talk into a microphone. I walk down the street. I listen to music. I go to concerts. I watch movies. Oh, you mean,

how much money do I make? Where do I work so you can compare me to you on the socioeconomic ladder? We just don't posit the question that way because we sound mean when we do it. But so, when I walked away from that, people said, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm just going to go write. Like, I want to write a novel. I want to finish this novel I've been working on for years. And people didn't believe me. They said, okay, but where are you really going? Can you take me with you and and it's because they had they have this template in their mind and and i had several supposedly successful people say well josh if everyone can make money as a writer then then everyone would be doing it and i'm like but you realize there are people who make a living

from writing right this i wouldn't be the first pioneer on on this journey who who wants to go off and and make a living from his creativity but by creating something meaningful for other people and people just couldn't buy into it because they had that they had a different template and then realized there was this other template out there that could work for me yeah no it's it's funny the more um the idea of templates is i, so fascinating because on one level, it shows you a path that you hadn't considered before. On another level, it's proof that it's possible. And I think that is a huge barrier for so much of us is that, you know, first we want to see the path. But we also – until like that possibility switch gets flipped, the path can be right in front of you.

But if you don't buy into the possibility, it doesn't matter. And I think that's what so many of us get trapped in, right? It's like, if you look around, you can almost find those templates. But until something happens where you're like, it's possible, it doesn't matter. Right. And sometimes I think also on top of that when we see too many paths and the paradox of choice shows up right complete overwhelm so we just don't decide yeah and it becomes impossible to decide and so we we just get stuck in paralysis of analysis and then we're

we refuse to take any action because it's going to be imperfect or whatever and i i could tell you that when we first started The Minimalists, we knew of four other minimalist blogs. And had I known that there were thousands of others out there, I may have felt, well, why would we dip our toe in that water? It's already been said. I'm glad I kind of did. I had this. I'm not glad that I was ignorant, but I'm glad at the time that I had this limited focus on here's the value we can add as opposed to what can we add because there's already so many voices out here. The truth is that everyone has a unique perspective. And I think that's why I wrote fiction for the longest time is I didn't have a very interesting nonfiction life to draw from. Yeah. That is really interesting. It also,

it kind of dips into one other thing I wanted to make sure that we talked about at some point, which is, it's the notion of minimalism and stuff. Okay, so we know that there's a relationship there, but it also really feels like what you're speaking to is not just the volume of stuff in your life, but also the volume of complexity in your life. Would that be accurate to say? Yeah, definitely. I mean, Josh and I, for example, we will take on one major project a year. Now that this year it's the documentary. It is pretty complex. There's a lot that we have to have to do. There's a lot that goes into that. I think the difference between our lives now and the lives of yesteryear is that the work that we do now is so much more rewarding. I was, you know, I used to show my employees how to show their salesmen how to sell cell phones to five-year-olds. And now I feel like I'm adding a tremendous amount of value to a lot of people. So that's really how we decide to choose which

projects we take on. It's how much value is this going to add to our audience? What is this going to do for others? And we've had to turn down a lot of things. I mean, we've had some really amazing opportunities, some like really high paid speaking gigs or opportunities to – there was this like building in South Dakota. Some guy came to us. He's like, man, I want you to build like a university here. It was like this multi-million dollar building. He just wanted to hand it over to us to like bring in people to help them create and to help them cultivate their passions, which like, to me, that sounded like an amazing opportunity, but there are certain things that, yeah, we definitely have, we had to turn it down because we were in the middle of filming our documentary. So, so yeah, I mean, the, the complexity that we

bring on still can be pretty complex. I mean, we did a hundred city tour. That's, that's a lot of work, but you know, there's one thing that I've learned through this whole journey, the message that we get propagated with of, if you find something you love, but it's not a very good expectation. What I've learned is that even though you may be living the dream, you still work a lot. Yeah. The difference now is, you know, I'm not just chasing a new title, a new job title or chasing sales numbers just for the sake of having that status. I mean, now when we choose a project, we know how complex it's going to be, but the results from that are far more astounding than what we used to do. struggling with the balance between what I call serial creation and parallel creation. And I know that when I'm in a parallel creation mode where I have multiple simultaneous complex projects going on at once, it kills me. And sometimes it's just, it is the way it is. You know, stuff just lines up in a way where I hoped it wouldn't, but that's, and you have

to go in and bear it. Like what kind of examples? Like what things parallel? So if I'm- Like writing and podcasting, that kind of thing? Not so much because you get into kind of a groove with sort of the regular media. But if we have something substantial, so if I'm- Like writing and podcasting, that kind of thing? Not so much because you get into kind of a groove with sort of the regular media. But if we have something substantial, so if I'm launching a book and simultaneously building and launching a product and simultaneously we have a huge event that's going on.

So we've got different teams of people working on stuff. And I'm amazingly blessed to have just an amazing team of people that it's not just me. I play the smaller role in what we do. But still, if I hit a point where I feel like my ability to create at the level that makes me feel good is being challenged because I'm having to make too many decisions simultaneously or in this massive, super high speed deadline driven thing, and the outcomes that we're working towards overlap in a really substantial way. I can generally do it, but I also simultaneously know that I'm suffering more

and more every day. And the quality of what I create in all of those things is not going to approach what A, I'm capable of creating and B, what's going to really matter most to other people. And knowing that also just makes you feel like crap because you know that you're not doing your best work and you know you're not serving people on the level that you could serve them. So I still struggle with this on a regular basis because we have a lot of complexity in our business right now, but I'm constantly in the quest of how do I spread things out or hand things off or reorganize our process to allow me to step as much into that space of serial creation rather than parallel creation as much as possible. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm working on it.

I don't know that there is a simple answer necessarily, but my favorite quote is from Thoreau. He said said it's not enough to be busy the question is what are you busy about yeah and if i were to pin that i would say what are you focused on and so what ryan was saying earlier we focus on one major project a year but then other things will serve that project and whatever we're doing and so i'm not looking 5 10 20 years down the horizon generally i look the horizon for me is a year out for the most part. And whatever we're doing tends to serve that. And I've, over time, gotten much better at saying no.

I say no a lot now. But it's just so I can say yes to things like this. To the right stuff. To sitting down with you. Oh, stop. So right before you guys came in here, I had a chance to actually secretly screen the documentary you've been referencing, which is really awesome. Really nice job. I enjoyed it.

And I mean, apparently it took you three years to do that also. So what a huge labor of love. I'm talking about complexity, actually, like layering that onto different stuff. What were the big learnings and major surprises from that for you guys? We started TheMinimalists.com about six years ago. And since then, we've written hundreds of essays on minimalism. We've published three books about intentional living. We've toured internationally and tried to find different ways to spread the message of minimalism.

We even started a podcast. And, you know, I found that we're constantly finding new ways to spread the word of minimalism. And so we went out about three years ago with our director, Matt D'Avella, who's an amazing talent director. He's done a bunch of commercial work and he wanted to do something meaningful. And so we approached him about doing, he did a trailer for our book, Everything That Remains about three years ago. And we just started talking about maybe making something else, something different.

But we didn't want it to just be the Josh and Ryan show. Like we, yeah, we're awesome. We think we're awesome, just ask us. But the truth is like, we wanted to find other perspectives. We want to make minimalism more accessible. And we want to show people that minimalism isn't a radical lifestyle. Minimalism is a practical lifestyle. And so, that was the

journey we went on. So, we went out and interviewed minimalists from all walks of life, minimalist families like Leo Vivalta, minimalist architects and writers and artists and entrepreneurs and environmentalists, people from the sustainable fashion industry, neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, economists. And basically what we discovered is that while all these people live considerably different lives, they all share one thing in common. They're all striving to live a meaningful life with less. I was going to say, it's crazy.

We have literally had CEOs from major corporations show up to our event along with, you know, the factory blue collar worker. And they're both asking the same question, how to live a meaningful life. And, you know, I think when I first started on this word of minimalism, I certainly saw the benefits that anyone could derive from this, no matter where they fell on a socioeconomic scale. But the fact that, you know, a 12 year old will bring his mom out and say, Hey mom, you know, I've been reading these guys on minimalism. I like what they're writing and they might be

able to help you out too. It's just amazing how, how many lives it touches and how many different types of lives it touches. That's very cool. So it feels like it's a good place to kind of come full circle. Also. You guys are coming off the road after this amazing journey and we always wrap with the same question here. So if I offer the term to live a good life, what comes up for each of you? For me, living a good life is surrounding myself with people who are supportive, people who have similar values, even though they might have radically different beliefs from me. Also focusing on my health, being creative, and being able to give to the world in a meaningful way.

Yeah. I would say for me, a good life is my short-term actions aligning with my values and beliefs. Going back to that, that is where I find myself able to give the most. That's where I find myself the happiest or the most content. Again, it's not like I wake up every single morning like, oh my God, I am so manic this morning. I'm so happy. But I certainly do wake up with a purpose now. And when I have been able to cut out all the superfluous things, it just makes room for the things that are most important to me. Thank you both. Thank you.

Thanks for having us. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam

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