The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Brain Potential: How to Thrive After 45

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Unlocking Brain Potential: How to Thrive After 45 Extendmyrunway.com About the Guest(s): Dr. Michael Netzley is an affiliated faculty member and executive coach at IMD Business School. He is the founder of Extend My Runway, a company that applies neuroscience and behavioral science to help senior leaders enhance their judgment and performance, particularly under pressure. With expertise in creating tools like the Executive Brain Playbook, Dr. Michael Netzley has worked with over 15,000 executives across various industries including banking, aviation, healthcare, and professional services. His insights focus on leveraging the brain’s potential to improve with age. Episode Summary: In this intellectually stimulating episode, Chris Voss welcomes Dr. Michael Netzley, a distinguished expert in neuroscience and executive coaching, to discuss the fascinating concept that our brains can improve with age. Contrary to the popular belief that cognitive decline is unavoidable after 45, Dr. Michael Netzley elucidates exciting breakthroughs in neuroscience that demonstrate how strategic investments in brain health and training can lead to enhanced mental capacities even in later years. His unique perspective is grounded in scientific evidence that reshapes our understanding of aging and cognitive development. Dr. Michael Netzley dives deep into the neuroscience behind brain development after 45, explaining how maintaining brain health through a balanced diet, proper sleep, and regular exercise can help extend cognitive longevity. The conversation further explores the challenges and methods of adapting to the modern world filled with distractions like social media. Tune in to discover practical strategies and insights into sustaining brain health, leveraging life experiences for growth, and the surprising potential for peak innovation and strategic thinking well past middle age. Key Takeaways: The brain can get better with age if properly cared for through healthy lifestyle choices like a balanced diet, exercise, and adequate sleep. Engaging in brain training exercises can significantly improve cognitive performance and adaptability in older adults. Innovations in neuroscience suggest that people in their later years can excel at strategic and innovative thinking, challenging negative stereotypes about aging. Avoiding activities such as multitasking and excessive screen time can preserve cognitive bandwidth for more critical tasks. Dr. Michael Netzley’s work emphasizes the importance of sustained cognitive health and details actionable steps to thrive after 45. Notable Quotes: “Your brain is actually your unfair advantage in the age of AI.” “The brain health trinity…improve sleep, nutrition, and exercise.” “The truth is brain decline is inevitable, but the compensation can be stronger than the decline.” “Considering the whole body issue is crucial as all these parts are more interconnected than previously thought.” “We waste our most precious cognitive bandwidth on nonsense when it should be used more wisely.”

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, Voss here from the Chris Foss Show.com. We kind of just died off at the end there. I figured it'd be fun of them and doing the up thing. So welcome to the show with my family and friends. For 16 years and 27 episodes, we've been bringing the Chris Voss show.

And I'm just about ready to lose my mind, but we have someone on the show to help us all regain what little bits of our mind we have left, at least speaking for myself, I should say. And before we get to that, we are going to guilt and shame you and, you know, kind of twist your arm a little bit. Not the hard kind of twist. You know, just maybe a little wrist, like slap, you know, something to remind you. Refer to the show of your family, friends, relatives. Go to goodreads.com, port says Chris Foss. And don't hear your relatives either.

It just let me do it. Go to Facebook.com, YouTube.com, fordst, Chris Foss. Whatever, you know, LinkedIn, all that stuff. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host. or the Chris Faw Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show, and he's more interesting than my intro was. So we're excited to have him on because I need all help I can get after fumbling the start there. Dr. Michael Netsley joins us on the show.

Michael, did I get your last name correctly? You got it perfect. Thank you. I forgot to ask. It's the end of the day. I'm clearly losing at this point, but you'll help me get my brain back. He is an affiliated faculty and executive. coach at IMD Business School. He's the founder of Extend My Runway. He works with senior leaders to

apply neuroscience and behavioral science to strengthen judgment and performance under pressure. He is the creator of the executive brain playbook and has worked with more than 15,000 executives across banking, aviation, healthcare, and professional services. Welcome to the show. Michael, how are you? I am fantastic. So good morning from Singapore. Great. connect and great to be here with your guest. Well, we're glad to have you all the way from Singapore. Singapore, I think your arms must be tired from flying, right? Only 9,000 miles. Very close, very close. So give us dot coms, any place in the interwebs you want people to find you. Yeah. So the easiest connection is literally extend my runway,

all one word, dot com. And you'll also find me on LinkedIn as well. Those are the two primaries. So extend my runways. Is this about fashion shows, Zoolander and doing the walkoff, or how's that work? I've never thought about it that way, but it's really about some amazing science that I stumbled upon 10, 12 years ago about how we can actually get better with age. Oh, really? You know, the primary narrative, Chris, is that we go downhill after 40, 45. And even Oprah Winfrey approved gurus will tell you, you go down after 45. But that's not what the science tells us. Really? Really? Yeah. So what does the science tell us? I think the implication of the science is that your brain is actually your unfair advantage in the age of AI. Now, the reason for that is that if we make

investments, none of this is automatic. My 13-year-old boy will come home in a hoodie and call me brough, one of these days. That's automatic. But if you make the investments, after 45, your brain can get better at managing complexity. You can excel at strategic thinking. You can excel at focus. Some really amazing research from the Center for Brain Health at University of Texas. If you make the investments, innovative thinking can peak in your 60s. Really? Really. And it's not the 28-year-old a mom and dad's t-shirt, you know, mom-dad's sofa. It's in your 60s.

And the same thing with transformation in your ability to remain relevant. That peaks in your 60s as well, that your ability to update. So there's a, it's an amazing story of just how good we can be between 45 and 75. Wow, that's really awesome.

Because, you know, I kind of feel sometimes off. I started testosterone placement a couple years ago and before that I had bad brain fog and I didn't know it until I got my chemical balance back you know I started snorting and inject testosterone

I go into a testosterone clinic and I go I'm here to drop off some testosterone for everybody I hope you guys have a big week because I got a lot I got a lot to drop and then I go in the back and everyone looks at me like that guy's the side of us and you're on the other side of the equation right

yeah yeah and I come out and I go Oh, man. All right. Got this so strong for all you folks here, and they all look at me like, oh, my God. So there's that. But, no, I thought the brain kind of got a little fuzzy, foggy as you age. I mean, sometimes I kind of feel like mine's a little foggy. So, well, let's set brain fog aside, because that really is more of a situational development. Okay. But the truth is, brain decline is inevitable. Now, something really amazing begins in, say, your late 30s and continues till 60, 65, in that your brain's in this struggle. Part of it is decline, but automatically the brain is also trying to compensate. So it will sort of reach into other parts of the brain and find some additional resources to keep you sharp.

Now, here's the problem. If we don't make the investments in ourselves, if we don't take care of ourselves, the decline is stronger than the compensation. But if you do make the investments, the compensation is stronger than the decline. And that compensation gives, it extends your runway. It gives you more years where all of these additional cognitive strengths can be developed and emerge. So you've got to take care of yourself. That's less than number one. What?

Yeah, I know. You can't eat five pizzas a day anymore? Bad news for my whiskey collection, I'll tell you. Yeah, I missed the days of being able to drink. Those are some good days. Yeah, those were the good days. They finally caught up to me where it's like, I just look at alcohol and get a hangover,

and so I had to finally quit. Like, seriously, it just, we won't beer, and you'd be, so why am I hungover? I used to be able to drink, have a bottle of vodka. So it's a wonder I have a working brain left. Now, let me ask you this. Yes. Why is this?

Why is it, you know, we can do all the jokes like youth is wasting on the young. That's my favorite joke. And get off my lawn. I'm that Clint Eastwood character now in my old age. Get off my lawn, you mech. And you feel lucky. I'll spray you with those. We don't shoot people.

We just spray them with hose. You know, like my, I had actually, I actually had people do that to me when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah. It spreads with those because they're walking on their sidewalk. Anyway, why is it this thing? Like, why aren't young people as smart as they think they are? Okay.

So there's three questions in that one. Let me take the third one first. All of these higher order forms of thinking are fueled by life experience. We don't have a whole lot of that before 40 to be blunt. We really don't. So they just don't have the fuel yet to, fully develop and optimize strategic thinking, innovative thinking, managing complexity, and so on. But the really big change is, number one, we're not working ourselves to death the way our grandparents

did. Physical labor is a much smaller part of the workforce. And concurrently, particularly in the West, the United States is a great example. All of these investments in health care, people are living 30 years longer. Our grandparents never had the opportunity on average to live long enough for this to even happen. And you and I are the first generation where this is a real thing for us. Yeah. I mean, 100 years ago, we were all actually like, I think the 50s. I mean, when they created social services, Social Security, you know, at 65, when they

created that whole thing, most of the people didn't live to 65. It was the greatest moneymaker for the government because they're like, these guys paid it and they thought they were going to live to 65. But now the flips has happened where, you know, we're living in like 165 and the government's like, do we have to keep paying these people? Exactly, exactly. So we've got a system that is no longer aligned with the demographic reality that we live in.

Yeah. Do you think maybe we need to extend? You know, I feel pretty great at 58. I don't know. I don't know, things can change in a moment's notice, welcome to the world. I feel better after getting my testosterone rebalance. That changed my life. It may save my life.

But barring enough for seeing some sort of piano landing on my head or, you know, getting run over by a bus, that seems to be a favorite joke on the show now. Or, you know, cancer or some sort of horrific thing overtaking me, I feel like I could live and just keep writing, doing the show, writing books. I feel like I keep doing intellectual stuff. I don't know. But I'm going to hold you to this. I'm going to call you on him 70.

And if I'm dumber and not, I'm not to read the right after you. I'm the guy you're going to call it. I'm blaming you for everything after that. But how do we do this investment? What do we got to invest? This is like an only fan is where I have to buy a monthly subscription or something. What's going on? No, no, and not that I know anything about only fans.

Yeah, I was asking for it. But there's a couple of levels here. Let's start with the lifestyle level. What you start and what you stop. What you start is what I call the brain health trinity. You have to significantly improve sleep, nutrition, and exercise. So this is like building the foundation of a house. If you don't have a good foundation, the house is going to crumble.

So nutrition, five pizzas a day, right? I wish. I wish. I'm going to say the word my kids hate broccoli. But you get where I'm going. There's no swearing on the show, Michael. Whole foods, healthy fats, protein, these, these, you know, Mediterranean diet. I mean, I got to eat a salad. Got to eat a salad, but you're a lot to have good cheese in there.

Oh, good cheese. Yeah. I'm one of those people. If you give me a hunk of cheese, like a piece of Swiss cheese, like I'll eat the whole brick. Oh, exactly. I'm just completely like that. Yeah, yeah. If you put booze in front of me, I'll drink the whole glass.

You put water in front of me and drink. I have a OCD problem. So now what else? So you've got to start with the brain health trinity. That's what you do. The trinity. Here's what you don't do. Multitask.

Sit all day. Stay alone and not interact with other people. And let me say, okay. I'm feeling attack right now, Michael. Yeah, I know. It ruined my lifestyle. But, I mean, multitasking and alcohol are just horrific for your brain.

They really are. And if you could cut your multitasking in half and cut your alcohol in half or I just drink earlier. What if I just cut my brain in half? I think that's, was that a lobotomy? So that's a different story, but there are people who've actually had that done.

They're literally out there with half a brain. Yeah. I see people on Twitter. They're all on Twitter. Yeah, they're all on Twitter. But. Social me. But seriously, if you can just cut those two things in half, or as I was saying, I've become a lunch drinker, like on Saturday with rugby games.

Oh. And, you know, it just, you stop doing the bad things. You start doing the good things, and you build the foundation for really great brain health. Yeah. Does gut health count into that? We talk a lot on the show about gut health and how it's your second brain and, you know, how if your guts. inflamed, it can cause your brain to be inflamed. Exactly. And so many of the neurochemicals are produced in your gut as well.

So gut health is a huge part of it. And one of the scientific things that's changed is we are no longer going, well, your brain is your brain, your heart, your nerves are your nerves, your gut is your gut. We now realize how intimately all these things are connected. And it really is a whole body issue. It's pretty intimate. I've seen myself naked. I wouldn't go on there. I wasn't going there.

Right now, people are dry heaving those in the show. No comment. So eating right, eating healthy, I guess should be better than right. Getting rid of the booze, you know, I quit drinking in 2020. You know, I had a lot of fun for 20 years. But like I said, it just got to the point where two hours. hours of fun on a Friday night equal three days of dehydration, low knee, water clean, water loss. You know, like the second or third day, I'm peeing like a horse because I put on all this water to offset the hangover hydration or a dehydration.

And then you're like, I feel like I'm wearing like five pounds. And then, you know, two or three days later all goes. And you feel like you got a headache. And then my energy. And finally I just went, hey, man, two hours of fun. worth it. And then I discovered edibles. Yeah. Okay. Now, so in Singapore, we don't have that, but yeah, it's, you know, the body changes in, in amazing ways. And, you know, at 28, we could have gone out and had a great night with our friends and survived at work the next day,

where now at my late 50s, it's a two-day hangover in recovery. Yeah. If I have chicken late, I probably have a hangover. No, I'm just kidding. So diet's important. You got to take care of your health. You got to take care of your gut health. What are some other ways we need to invest that you can get on? So let's say you've got the foundation bill.

What comes next is brain training. So in the same way, we go to the gym and do curls to strengthen our biceps, which, and let's be blunt, that really isn't exciting to be blunt. We've got to do the same thing for our brain. So there are patterns. of thinking for innovation. There are patterns of thinking for transformational thinking. There are mindsets around managing complexity.

You've got to practice using them the same way you go to the gym and build up your muscles. And as an adult, if you do not make these two investments, the brain health, followed by the brain training, it is unlikely that these great capabilities that can emerge later in life, it's very unlikely it happens for you if you do not make these investments. Oh. Now, is video games a great way to help with this? I love strategy games. I've always loved strategy games.

And for me, being an entrepreneur, that's all it is, a giant strategy game and life, really, when you lose, it's kind of lost, you don't get the start over. But are video games helpful in this format? or do we need to do chess or read books? What are some of the ways that we can make this investment? You know, video games is an interesting question, and we're seeing more and more research on that. People are taking actual strategy games, for example,

and using them in their research and seeing positive results. There's a researcher in Southern San Francisco, actually, I think, whose entire brain health and brain treatment protocol, is built around video games, but he built his own for it. So things that challenge your thinking in new and different and in a positive way, stress or stretch your brain, these are good. Now, here's the bad news. All of these brain training apps that you see on your phone,

99% of them do not work. Here's what that means. You'll get better at that one game, but you won't be better at work. You won't be better with your family. You won't be better when you're online gaming. It's only for that game. So there's a group out of California called Posit Science,

and they do have an app called Brain HQ. Now, this is not an advertisement. This is the only one that I know of that if you were to add that app to your phone will give you those measurable brain gains and those results are transferable to other contexts of life so that you are actually better. Now, what's the name of this app? It's called Brain H-Q.

Now, a couple of people are trying to steal that. I found them online. So it's by POSIT, P-O-S-I-T. Brain H-Q. Yeah, by Posit Science. Oh, this one works. I got it. Yeah.

No, there's another one. You know, yeah, I've got a freebie for you as well, if you like. Sure, yeah. Center for Brain Health. University of Texas at Dallas. Okay. They've got something called the Brain Health Project. Now, is this online or isn't that?

This is online. Okay. So no electrodes on your head or anything like that. Damn it. You can sign up for free. And when you sign up for free, you get the free brain training as well. But then they retest you. Hmm.

And in fact, their research was an inspiration for my story. startup because what they saw is that not only did brain performance improve, but they went back and tested people two years later, and those brain gains held. They didn't diminish. Uh-huh. Yeah. So, Brain HQ and Center for Brain Health. Center for Brain Health.

I'm going to take a look at this. That way I can give whenever I meet stupid people, which is about every five minutes, not you, clearly. You know what you're talking. I don't. Well, I sound like it. I need it for me. Really, but I need it for a friend.

Yeah, that's it. All right, so I'll check at this brain health project and the app as well. They do amazing work there. Yeah. I don't know. I know the one thing I do get from video games is quicker responses.

There are some games that when I switch between them, there's a few that I play. A lot of them are very high-paced and they really get me to jack up my brain function. Like, I have to go. All right, man, let's get it. Get on. Let's get on it. You know, and sometimes when I first start maybe playing a new game,

I'm not used to at speed. You know, and it's kind of built for these young kids. They're, you know, there's 12-year-olds, they've got all their, you know,

they got crazy flip of fingers, and they got perfect ice tight. And I'm barely seen out of one eye, and it's all blurry and shit. I'm like, where do I? Which end of the gun do I hold? You know,

I'm that guy in the gaming things. And, but a lot of times after a while, my brain will force myself to speed up to it and adjust to it. So I don't know. I mean, it's, I'd like to find games that keep me going right now. It's just dodging bullets in the game of life, you know. But you're hitting the nail on the head.

If I can give you a contrast, somebody could be a CFO, a C anything. And they're going to keep making the same kinds of decisions day after day after day. Now, they may have a big brand name behind them. The contract that they've got to make a decision about, this one may be with pharmaceutical, that one may be with logistics, but it's the same pattern every day. That's not going to help. What you're describing where you push those boundaries, you stretch those boundaries, that's exactly what has to happen.

It's like going to the gym. If you do a set of 10, which one really gives you value, the 11th. you've got to stretch it. And that's how we strengthen the brain. What if I just kind of stick my fingers in there and swirl them around? Will that kind of give it a stretch? I hate it when they touch, though. That's the bad thing.

Yeah, yeah, when they touch, it's bad. It's kind of alarming, actually. Sometimes I just take a pencil and then I just... Ploss it out. A little bit. You know, go back and forth like this. I think I saw it on a cartoon once. It worked, so clearly.

Now, let me ask you a couple things about this. There's two things I've heard. I'll throw one at you. Now, one thing that seems to be, it seems like people about 50 kind of have this awakening where they, let me see if I can describe because I've heard it from a few different variations from a few different sources. But there's, we kind of reach this awakening point where we've been alive long enough to where the patterns show. So like for me, at 50, I could see the destruction that I left in my path of my childhood trauma that I never resolved. and you know that you kind of reach a point in life where you can look back and go it could be me and you're like sorry but you you know you can kind of see things and I've heard

that sometimes you've developed enough where you understand human nature you've understand human patterns you understand yourself there's kind of like this awakening and the second part of my question is is this part of one of the things I really enjoyed about turning 50-ish and probably I don't know, 48 was my sex drive just kind of went in the toilet, which was probably part of the testosterone drop that I wasn't aware of at the time. But you kind of,

it kind of fades a little bit. You kind of quit, you know, that dingeing you have as a man where you're like, hot babes, hot babes, hot babes, you know, that whole pain. Exactly. Yeah. It was so nice to have that gone. And I'm like, wow, I can just kind of look at women and go, well, that's kind of cool.

You know, you're not dare. And I really love that. And then I got testosterone placement. That screwed up everything. In fact, my ADHD came back too. Like, I was really enjoying my ADHD being gone because I was so old, broken down, and I'm just like, well, this is nice. You know, I'm not chasing women.

I'm not, you know, ADHDing all the time, but, and then the testosterone brought it back. But is maybe the reduction or slowdown of some of our sexual drive, you know, women get paramedipause, premenopause, menopause. we we kind of are like, yeah, we're too old for the shit. I don't know. Is that part of maybe the reason we activate be smarter? We're not thinking about just getting late all the time. We're actually thinking about shit.

There's a couple of things going on here. And again, this natural progression through stages is just part of being human. And when you focus on the brain health trinity, there is a knock-on effect of basically through the really great health, you extend that period. And the declines we're talking about don't necessarily come as earlier or come as strongly in all of it. But also in this period, we've got to remember your brain is a prediction machine. You were talking about patterns.

And part of what happens in our 40s is we start to believe we've actually got it figured out. In our 30s, we thought we had it figured out. We knew we had to figure out. We knew we had to figure it out. Yeah, exactly. But in our 40s and 50s, we go, wait a minute, I think I might actually be figuring this out. I'm not the Dunning Kruger anymore. I'm a teenager.

I think she knows everything. So we fall into, I hate to say it, a somewhat lazy pattern. You know, and so we've done the hard work. We've got the promotions. We've got the home. We've got the truck or the BMW. We've got the vacations. And it's all just sort of working.

And that comfort is what gets us in trouble when it comes to midlife and brain health. You've got to go through the pain of, can I give you a really simple example? I've been in Singapore for 24 years, all right? Been a darn good life. You can see behind me, it's a lovely place. Darn good life. Things have, you know, five kids, things have worked out really, really well. and I'm ready for another adventure

because it's just things are stable, if you will. So you want to fake your death, get a new wife, get some... Well, okay, so I'm not going that far. I'm not moving to Uruguay and exact. But, you know, can I see myself relocating to New Zealand or relocating to Mauritius and just taking on an all-new challenge one more time? Hey, you want a challenge. come to America right now in 2020.

Oh, boy. Come on. Come on over. The water is ice. The sharks are in the shallows. Absolutely. Lines are Roman. But, but, you know, if you stay in that comfortable pattern,

it's hard to fight the decline. You've got to challenge yourself. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I've been an entrepreneur all my life. And so all my life, I kind of learned early on surviving cults and trauma and different things and people who were trying to sell me all sorts of bullshit. it. I learned a survival skill learning to think outside the box. And, you know, and part of what I can see outside the box is why is, what's someone in intent? What are they pitching me? Why do they have this angle? What is

their motivation? And so I can look at advertising and different things and try and figure out how it's trying to manipulate me. It's probably why I'm sitting all my life. It's not a woman who's been able to masculate me. And what's my point with this? I'm just seguing and joking to the whole day. Brain fog. Brain fog. brain fogs back. I know more testosterone. But as an entrepreneur, I always, I was trying to avoid the Dunning Kruger mindset,

where the least you know, but you have the highest amount of confidence in what you know. And so I just, I just always operate that I got still more to learn. It seems like the longer I'm on this life, there's one constant, is that the more I think I know, the more I don't know.

And that's probably tattooed in my butt somewhere or something. I don't know. We have to check. But it's, I mean, that, that, we could go back to ancient philosophers. That is basically Zen Buddhism. That is the definition of wisdom is realizing you know nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And the long I live the clear that can be sometimes.

Yeah, exactly. Or if you had a big night of drinking, it's definitely true. Yeah. When your friends call you next day and go, hey, do you remember what you did last night? You're like, I don't know. My head hurts. Nope. Don't tell me.

Where are my clothes? And why I'm in the ER for something that's been inserted? No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Anyway, so does the, do you think the sexual slowdown of some of that, some of that sexual drive where you're just, you know, you're not thinking all the time about trying to chase someone around a room and you can like, and I'm better at business because I can focus on business now.

You know, my 30s, I was probably more interested in women a little bit. Now I'm all about business. And when you're like, you know, I'm at that age where my back hurt, my knees hurt, you know, if we're going to go spend an hour or two kicking around the room, you know, that's a lot of work. And if you go, hey, Chris, do you want sex or a sandwich? I'm like, what's on that sandwich? Yeah. But these are perfectly natural changes, you know, we're, we sleep more poorly, so sex drive is going to go down.

And that's just natural in middle life. We probably are not as fit as we used to. to be the testosterone levels change. And simply put, as we start to realize that we're not, we're not going to live forever. When time becomes an actual finite thing for us, our priorities change, your mindset, our priorities change as well. So there's a whole suite of things that just in general in midlife we go through. And the brain is just one part of it.

The brain! The brain! You know what you should do? You should make some extra money on the side, not like you need it. But you could like go to like birthday parties or go to parents' house to have teenagers and, you know, they could just pay you just to give a small lecture of the teenager that their parents are still smarter than them. There we go.

It sounds like money. Because the kids will listen to me, right? Well, sure, yeah. Well, you're a scientist. You could do one of those things. What is that thing like the famous people do where they do a little video clip and they go, hey, Bob, happy birthday. You can do one of those where you give a little message out to. There we go. we go.

Yeah. My husband's an idiot. Can you talk to him? But, no, brain health is really important. You know, my mother's 83 right now. I want her to stay around as long as she can and be aware as long as she can. Because why not? I mean, my sister's in dementia and she has MS.

She's been in care centers for like 10, 20 years. And so I'm watching what that dementia does. And I'm looking at my mom going, I don't want that to happen to her. and I'm sure she doesn't want it to happen to me with dementia because it can happen to anybody. But age, you know, you get older and you're like, hmm. But I'm hoping my brain will get better as I get older and I seem to get better. Like right now I have all sorts of tips and tricks for ADHD and I try and manage it as best side possible. But, you know, it is the CEO's disease and we innovate like, you know, MFers.

I'm hoping that what you're saying will occur with me in spite of all of my drinking. and food I ate over 20 years. But yeah, I mean, I want my brain to keep working and my mouth is working. So I keep doing this podcast when I'm 100 years old. You know, it's frightening to think that we live 30 years longer. Do you want to lose your mind and have a body that's healthy and functioning for another 15, 20 years? No. No.

I mean, it's the memories that I have and the photo, I have a lot of photos of my life. But even then, you know, I come from a part of life where he didn't take a lot of photos up to like 30, 40s, you know. And the cameras weren't that good back then. And stuff comes to me. I'll be like, oh, yeah, I remember that. Oh, yeah, I remember doing that with my dogs. Oh, yeah, I remember doing that with a friend. And I'm just like, wow, I have some pretty interesting times in my life.

And, you know, a lot of that's kind of fading, probably because there's so much I'm up to. But, you know, being able to have that, I want to be able to, you know, as I'm on my death. or spending my wind-down time. I want to be able to think about my life and enjoy my life, because at least I'll have those, you know? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You're not going to be, you're not going to be doing like,

hey, I'm 90 years old. I want to do NASCAR, you know, or something like that. Yeah, we all wish we could be Brad Pitt and F1, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't George Bush jump out of a plane at like 90 or something like that, George Bush Sr.? I think he did. Yeah, I vaguely remember, yeah, yeah.

Good for him, though. I mean, you know, the, you know, the Northman. Normandy survivors did that for quite a few years. You and I would remember that. He's probably in better shape than I was, too, because he was in the military when he's young. I tell he's a lot of young people. I'm like, lay a good foundation, go to the gym, work out, eat healthy, lay a foundation now. Don't, you know, I spent the last 10 years trying to play ketchup, lose 100 pounds, eat less ketchup.

And, you know, it's got a lot of sugar in it. And, you know, take care of my brain because, yeah, I want it to work. I don't want to be, I think that would be hell and I see what my sister goes through. And I think it would be hell if you could, if you lose your brain, but you're still there. Yeah. Because it's really hard to watch too. It's really hard to experience. Incredibly.

I've had two family members. Yeah. And so for me, taking care of my brain and my mom does different things to try and help her brain, you know, reading and she plays games. And, you know, she does stuff to, you know, try and keep her from that. but you know, you always wonder, you're like, am I doing the right thing for this brain? So I'm glad you've established this. It's important. 40 to 50% of dementia cases are preventable.

And so I didn't get serious until about 45. I wish I would have started at 35 or even 30, investing in myself. But it's just, it's a choice and it's something we can all make. Yeah. So let's talk about, this has been a great discussion. We're just having fun here. Let's talk about what you offer on your website, how people can reach out to you, work with you, utilize your services. Tell us about some of their offerings you have there.

Yeah. So extendmyrunway.com, and I offer a variety of things there. Certainly, I've been doing a lot of virtual keynotes lately piping into corporations. I do a tremendous amount of one-on-one coaching for people who are at midlife and beyond. Because as you and I were talking about, this is an inflexible. point for us, a transition. And what God is here won't get us there. So we spend a lot of time working on identity, reshaping that story you tell yourself, and being better positioned to really take advantage of these late-in-life strengths. But to be honest, the core, and what has always been

my bread and butter, is executive development programs. So a lot of these are again delivered virtually, but if you're in Southeast Asia on this side of the world, happy to do them in person as well. But bottom line, what I do is I help people change in a way that allows them to thrive after 45. It is that simple. Well, I'm going to just use all your stuff. And any time anybody challenges that I'm thinking stupid stuff,

which is, you know, daily. I'm just going to say, hey, man, I talk to the doc. and he says, I'm smarter after 45. There you are. And I'll be smarter by 70. So we got a runway. We got a runway. Exactly.

As long as no one hits me over the head or I don't run into something. So that's possible too as well. But I'm not drinking anymore, so I tend not to run in anything. See what I did there. Anyway, people like, why are you explaining that? Anyway, so they can reach out to you. They can consult with you. They can get on your website.

They can find out more and all that good stuff. Anything more we need to know about some of the things you offer there? If you want to read about this, an I by IMD magazine. I published an article called Thriving After 45 is the best still to come. And so you can find out an I by IMD magazine. And it'll kind of lay out all the basic science, give you the framework. And it's a quick and easy read that lets you go, hey, this is actually going to be helpful. for me. So that would be a good starting point for a lot of people.

IAMD Business School, thriving after 45 is the best still yet to come. I think I get better with age. I think I, you know, I struggle a lot with, I goofed off a lot, life because I now wife and kids, and I did a lot of fun adventures instead by design. And I was kind of like, you know, you guys all got that wife and kids thing. going on and that's great and I think you know at the time I lived in Utah so they have like one more child per family than the rest of the nation yeah sometimes 10 more and I was just like you know I think I got you guys got me covered here so I don't need to contribute and I don't I like sleep too much I like sleep a lot actually and uh and I know that baby thing I mean it's great for the people it's not for me and so you know I did a lot of ventures in life and I don't know hopefully

hopefully that that will help my longevity. I don't know. But I don't remember why I got on the segue, and I'm halfway down the point. So are you sure? The brain gets better. But hopefully you get the genetic lottery and it all pays off for you.

That's the goal here. Was the brain the brain gets better after 45 minutes or age 45? Because I'm 45 minutes in and I'm losing my segways. That's good. I'm going to read the article. Thriving after five is the best still yet to come. Oh, what I was going to say was, I kind of lived a life that, if you want to call me Peter Pan, go ahead, go ahead, because I had fun. Peter Pan.

And Peter Pan syndrome. But, you know, so I didn't really kind of grow up too much. I mean, I've owned companies on my life, but, you know, I had a lot of fun. But now in my, I feel like at my age, I turn 58 here next week, four days. Jesus. And I feel like I'm hitting on all cylinders like I've never. ever hit before. Bingo.

I feel a little bit, you know, a little bit lighter on energy sometimes. That's what coffee and red bulls are for. How many red bulls do I need to drink to make this 45 brain? I wouldn't go down the Red Bull route, but... For day? I agree with what you were saying. It's, you know, my runtime, my per mile timing may be slower, but I'm doing the best work of my life.

Yeah. Plus, I'm not as distracted. I can be focused even with the ADHD coming back, you know. I'm not chasing girls around. I'm not chasing, you know, I'm not doing stupid things. I'm still, you know, my podcast probably is the greatest thing that helps my brain. Yeah, that's probably a good question for you. Hey, does it have a podcast, have all these brilliant authors like yourself and writers and people that are smirk on the show?

Does that help improve my brain at all? Is that? 100%. Your brain is hardwired for social connection. You're doing the right thing. Let me ask you about that because we're really having trouble with social connection in this world, especially after COVID. Yeah. And people are isolating themselves pretty badly.

I run a big dating 5,000 member group, and we can't get more than 100 out of them in any given time to show up at an event in person to person. Because after COVID, they're like scared of each other. And they're like, well, you know, there's strangers there. And I'm like, there's strangers at Smith's the store and your grocery store and the 7-Eleven. You go get gas. You're surrounded by strangers at all times. Some of you're married to a perfect stranger probably. We found that out during COVID.

And so isolation hurts the brain maybe? 100%. Join a community group, join a running club, join a cycling club, or as Scott Galloway says, go to a bar and talk to a stranger. Yeah. You just, you've got to do it. And your brain will reward you for that. Yeah, I love it. We do three shows a day, Monday through Thursday, 48 shows a month in the podcast. I love talking to people. I love the interest. I love learning about them. I'm sick of me. That's part of the profit 58. I'm just like sick of me and my shit, my stupid stories. Probably so is the audience. He's going to tell a story. No more mirrors in the house. No more mirrors in the house. Yeah. And but having people on and, you know, I meet a new person three times a day that I've never met before. I, by the end, I usually have a good friend. And I've learned a lot from them. They've learned a lot from them. They're

stories, their journeys, and I love collecting them. And sometimes I go tell people, hey, you can't be a story. I got off a podcast. It's amazing. I'm a storyteller, too. I'm a griot. I collect stories. That's like my thing.

So I don't know. Hopefully that will make me smarter. Yeah. You're doing the right thing. Keep it up. Cool. All right. I'll go back to drinking then.

All right. So final thoughts as we go out or final pitch out on people how they can onboard with you, learn more and all that good stuff. The last way is LinkedIn. I'm, I practically live on LinkedIn. I don't use, was it X or any of those? LinkedIn is the location or extendmyrunway.com. Yeah, I don't want to X.

I'm pretty sure that's bad for your brain. Yeah, I struggle. It's not for me. It's not for me. You know, let me ask you this. I know we've gone really long, but you brought some excellent data to this show. We've had people on that have said,

one of the problems our brains are having is we are not evolved and adapted to look at 2K screens, or to look at two dimension screens. We're designed to look at three-dimensional. You know, if I'm looking at your face, I'm looking at your eyebrows, your eye movement, your lips, you know, do I have stranger danger or are you a friend? We're gaining rapport, probably mirroring each other a little bit. There's all these millions of cues that we have

when we interact with each other's person. I imagine that, you know, keeps the old noggin on firing on point. But when we look at these screens and we're doom scrolling and maybe we're getting depressed or low dopamine, or just cheap dopamine hits, that probably can't be good for our brain. No, it's not. And Jonathan Hates' book is worth reading. But from my point of view, as I look at executives and the fact that we've got mortgages

and such to pay, what you're doing is you are consuming your most scarce and precious resource, which is your cognitive bandwidth. And you're wasting it on nonsense. And it's going to be really hard to thrive later in life when you're wasting not just the time, but that precious brain's bandwidth on complete nonsense. So that's fundamentally the problem is we have a hard time focusing because we've used up all the bandwidth. Oh, that explains what sometimes you just got to go take a nap or we need more Red Bull. go hit refresh and come back 20 minutes and you're better.

Red Bull, it gives rings. Are we getting paid for this Red Bull thing? Italian coffee this morning for me. Italian coffee. Do you do espresso or? No, no. I'm still the middle American farm boy. I can have coffee in my milk, but at least I get good coffee.

Well, I won't judge it too harshly. So I've gone full Italian. I can do the whole espresso machine. You want to keep your brain sharp? get yourself an express machine, all the expensive money pit toys

that come with it. That thing's a whole new, like it takes 20 minutes to make a coffee in the morning and if you haven't suffered through not having your coffee as soon as you wake up in the morning, go down that route.

But there's so much intricate stuff that you have to do and stuff, you know. But that's why we love it. It's fun. Yeah. Let's not put it that way, but it does give me coffee in the end.

You know, really it comes down to basically no one gets murdered. So there's no murder that explains. And that's really important the judge tells me after I've got six or seven. Six or seven? No crevation.

So people can reach out to you. They can work with you. Companies can hire you to consult for them. I'm sure executives, you probably work with a lot of executives, one-on-one CEO types. They're like, hey, man, I got a hit next level because, you know, demands are high. Exactly. How do we manage a world that has more demand than we have brain capacity? How do you manage it?

What if we just like, you know how they have single trailer homes and you put a double-eyed on it? Why don't we just have that with their brain? We can have like an add-on right here. Well, I think Elon's trying to do that by putting electronics in there. But again, I'm not sure I'm ready to go down that path. Yeah, I'm not sure I want a guy who's that high on ketamine. Yeah, there's a whole other thing going on there. That big of a narcissist is one of the two.

Anyway, so thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. And what a great discussion. So now I'm going to run around and tell all the teenagers that I'm smarter than them still. There you are. So bragging rights for the day. There you are. And I'm spraying in with the lawn hose.

Get off by lawn, you Gen Ziers. Oh, we like Jen Ziers. They're good people. I haven't met one yet, but I'm working on it. No, I'm just teasing. I love you people. Don't subscribe. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it, Doc. Thank you, Michael. And keep enjoying that beautiful scenery there in the Singapore. It's a pleasure, Chris. Thank you for having me on. Thank you. And thanks for us for us for us, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com,

for it's us Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTokity. All's a crazy place in it. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made

to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. How's that for the radio?