The Daily Stoic - Rob Dyrdek on the Power of Living With Intention

Episode Date: March 18, 2023

Ryan speaks with Rob Dyrdek about finding happiness and fulfillment by managing his time and energy in more intentional ways, transitioning from self-preservation to generational preservation, how journaling and applying Stoic principles has changed his life for the better, and more.Rob Dyrdek is an American entrepreneur, actor, producer, reality TV personality, and former professional skateboarder. He is best known for creating and hosting the MTV reality and variety shows Rob & Big, Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory, and Ridiculousness. In 2016, he founded the Dyrdek Machine, a business investment firm and incubator that targets startups. In 2021, Dyrdek started the business-focused podcast, Build with Rob, and he also founded the Do-Or-Dier Visionary Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed at providing entrepreneurship opportunities to underrepresented youth.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives

and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. So several years ago now, I was at Tom Bill use house, the wonderful podcaster and thinker who's very good to me over the years. And I'm in the green room waiting to go on and who walks in, but Rob Deertick, the professional skateboarder host of basically every show

on MTV, someone who I watched a lot of when I was in college, when I was hanging out. And I've always loved his stuff. I thought it was a fascinating guy. And I got to know his cousin, also a star in the show, drama, who'd read the books. And I guess drama had turned Rob Deerick onto them. He was sort of vaguely familiar with who I was. And then I got a message from him like years later that he had been reading the books and we and we became

friends. And you'll see in this episode we kick off our discussion with a chat about the very large invisible Marcus Aurelius statue that is behind him in his office, the office where in addition to overseeing his television empire out of, he's a serial entrepreneur, he's founded several businesses, street league skateboarding and, and through one media, a DeerDick machine, which is his investment farm and incubator. He's co-founded and partnered nearly 20 brands through DeerDick machine, five of which have been acquired by outside investors. And then in 2021, he started a business focus podcast

called Build With Rob, and he's got a really cool foundation called the Do or Dire Visionary Foundation, a nonprofit organization, aimed at providing entrepreneurship opportunities to underrepresented youth. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Rob Deertick and at Deertick Machine. You can listen to his podcast, Build With Rob anywhere you're listening to this podcast and you can go to Deertickmachine.com. go to deardicmachine.com. This is clearly a guy with a ton of energy, a dynamo, if you will, so it was inspiring and interesting to talk to him. And it was just really cool

when I sat down to write these books about Angel Philosophy. I wasn't thinking, oh, you know, people that I know, I just certainly wasn't thinking this is where I would end up, and it's always cool when things come full circle like this. So thanks to Rob for coming on the podcast. Thanks for Rob and Big, which I veged out on many a time over the years. Thought was always hilarious. And probably as I said at the beginning of the episode, probably put me on the path to the mini-donkeys

and the mini-cows and all the ridiculous animals. I have out on my ranch. And anyways, let's get into this conversation with the one and only Rob Deerdick. The Dell Technologies Black Friday in July event is on with limited quantity deals on top business PCs with Windows 11 Pro. Save on select Vostro laptops with built-in OS recovery fingerprint readers and antivirus protections. Plus you can save on select latitude laptops with a wide range of built-in privacy, collaboration,

and connectivity features. Enjoy unmatched productivity and connectivity with incredible savings on our best tech. Get free shipping and special financing with Dell Business Credit. Dell Technologies recommends Windows 11 Pro for business. Find the right tech for your needs by calling a Dell Technologies Advisor at 877 Ask Dell. That's 877 Ask Dell offered to business customers by Web Bank who determines qualifications for in terms of credit. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff.

And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient, it's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable, so why wait? And Toxbase can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties.

It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers. As a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic. That's Talkspace.com.sashtoic. Where did you get that guy? My wife got it for me, but it's trying to find the super legit hardcore cart from stone.

Marcus Statue was a little bit more difficult than I had thought. There's so many different versions of them in different sizes, but I wanted one that was like substantial, you know. I have a substantial one that I can't reach. It's too heavy, but then I got this little one. This is from the 1840s. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I like to think about who owned it before me and how fucking dead they are. I mean, I'll tell you what, like when you say that, that makes me want to go and try to hunt down like the oldest possible one. I was looking at the coins trying to get by some of the coins with his head on him. I have one of those somewhere. You know that I will eventually buy. Yeah, yeah, because there's some of those are like 50 G's, like some like the like gold ones, right? Like, yeah, it is crazy. This was definitely not 50,000. This was like a couple hundred bucks, but it's crazy to think like this guy was so famous

in his own life that he was faced with on the money people carried around and then he tried to be like a normal person, like imagine how corrupting it would be. I mean, you're obviously very famous, but that would be a fr- I mean, that's like a fraction of how much fame this guy must have had. No, I know. It's part of the fascination that I have with like the ability to distill life's truth down into words That stand the test of time and impact me 2,000 years later where I got I got to eventually like get a statue of this person because now I believe I can

Create work and impact that stays on the earth for thousands of years That's that's what he means to me, beyond just the words, you know. But isn't it funny though? He writes in meditations about how worthless posthumous fame is and what he's not trying for it. And yet he managed to do it anyway. It's like he hit the target, even though he was deliberately trying not to let the target distract him.

Right. Right. Because he knew the same way for me when I think about having a 500-year plan and impacting generations upon generations of Deer Decks. I also know that it's just exciting for me to create like this giant multi-generational strategy I have, but I also know it could just die out in generation two and be completely over it.

I'm okay with that. I enjoy the process of thinking that it could go on for thousands of years, you know? But, and also, if you're working on this big plan, this huge thing you're trying to build, and you hate doing it now, but you're telling yourself it will be worth it because in the future people will enjoy it, I think you're out of alignment, right? You have to be able to enjoy it now.

And if I think if you do enjoy it now and you do it with purity and intention and love and you know, presence and all of that, it actually makes it more likely that you'll make something that lasts and enders. Yeah, I mean, look, for me, you know, I transitioned in 2020 from self-preservation to like generational preservation. And because you don't, you almost, like, you have to grow your wealth to a certain level, right? Because I wasn't a writer.

When you write your books, you know that these could last for thousands of years. You know, books are sort of this medium that have life that go away beyond the author. Art has that same capacity. Having a pro skateboarder and having a show of viral videos doesn't have the same impact on the globe for thousands of years. And once I began to evolve and really began

to think a lot about the strategies that I've developed to lead like a very beautiful, peaceful, harmonious, amazing existence. It then began to connect me to, you know, how do you build things that last much longer? And then once I generated the wealth, I began to look at how I could actually make an impact multi-generational, which then turned into like, man, you could make stuff that sits in the world forever. And that's what even attracted me to even finding really daily meditations and stoicism in the first place, because once I heard that like, you know,

meditations was written 150 years ago and that it stood the test of time, it proved to me it was possible to create something that had that lasting impact. You know? Well, I want to talk to you about two ways that your work has impacted my life. But first, I want to tell you a quick Marx-Sarrealist statue story before we move on from this. So, have you ever been to Budapest? I have not.

Okay, so you should go because Marx-Sarrealist wrote a good chunk of meditations in Budapest? I have not. Okay, so you should go because Marcus really wrote a good chunk of meditations in Budapest in what the Roman camp of what was then called a Quincom. I'm probably mispronouncing, but you can go there. You could be in this little village where he wrote it. There's even like a hot springs that is open to the public that the Romans would have used. Like you're using the same spring coming up from the earth that potentially Marx really used. But anyways, in this museum at a Queencom, they have a statue, and it's a statue of the emperor, but what really struck me about it,

seeing this sort of just the head of Marx's release behind you, it struck me about the statues. It was a statue for what was the cult of the Emperor. So the Emperor's worshiped as a God in his own life. And they would pray to him and make sacrifices to him. But here's what's interesting about the statue. The statue is the body of the Roman male Emperor and then it goes to the neck

and then the head was replaceable. So each new emperor would come along and they would just carve a new head. They were like, why should we, it's hard to make a statue? Why should we do all this other work that nobody really cares about? All the matters is the face.

And I loved and I think Marcus would have appreciated the idea of like we're just a placeholder. Like they're swapping us in and out and like as important and as well known as our face might be, as soon as our moment in the sun is done, somebody else comes along and replaces us. Yeah. Yeah, and think about the rapid rate of replacement, you know, because he lived pretty relatively old for the time compared to the

average person, and really everybody was dying at like 40. And so it's like this idea that we're entering this age of where people are starting to live, went from 40 to 80 in 100 years, and we're on the cusp of curing the disease that is aging, that people could be living to 152, 200 years. Yeah, there was a year before several generations before Marcus, and it's called the year of five emperors. So they had five in one year, like they just kept dying or being killed.

And so the idea is, yeah, we're none of this is as stable and none of us are as permanent as we'd like to think we are. Yeah. Well, look, I told you this when we met at Tom Bill's house. You're obviously it was a silly TV show, but I feel like I partly live in the country

and have donkeys and animals because you had a reality show on MTV when I was in college and you're like, fuck it, I'm going to get a horse. And I was like, you can just do that. So you never know the kind of impact you can have on a person. You didn't listen to me. A lot of people went out and bought mini horses after Robin Bigg and every single one of them regretted it. Because a mini horse is not, look, you think, like, the same way that I thought I was purchasing

a dog, like, oh, it's just a dog with, that's a little less maneuverable. It's full fledged livestock. And I could not wait to them, to, to when we ended, um, Robin Bigg to get rid of that horse, you know what I mean? It couldn't have happened too soon because that was a mean piece of livestock as opposed to a sweet little pony. You know what I mean? Well, I don't have horses because I had heard that about horses and the donkeys are friendly

and I have a little bit more space than I think you did in the Hollywood Hills, but is the horse still around? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he lives in Burbank right now. You know, when we shot the last season of fantasy factory, we did sort of a, we did an episode, we wrote an episode where we didn't get a Hollywood star, we got a studio city square. Right.

And in studio city, we got like this black square with Robin Big on the sidewalk. So we brought the mini horse out and dressed up like we were all Robin Big from the same clothes from the Robin Big era to go through the process of getting our squared studio city instead of our star in Hollywood and that was the last time I've seen the horse. So I don't know. I don't know. Well, this also was I think probably not the lesson one might expect to take from that show, which I genuinely loved. I remember so the concept of the show for people aren't familiar is your escape order, you get yourself into trouble,

you go in places you're not, so you hire this guy to be your security guard, slash body man to follow you around and help you, and you guys become friends, it's a salarious show. But I remember looking at that and it expand, like what I took from that was, like skateboarding for you is your job, your body and your ability to practice that thing is your livelihood.

And if hiring a person to follow you around and be your bodyguard makes you better at that job, that's a good investment. And so I think people struggle whether they're a writer or an entrepreneur, they have some job that people make fun of, like social media influencer or whatever, they don't, like, we struggle with like, hey, like, if you, if you made widgets and you had to buy a van to deliver your, your widgets or a factory to make the widgets in, you'd be like, that's a cost of doing business.

But I think for other businesses, we struggle to like invest in ourselves or spend on the things that will help us do that thing more. And that was weirdly a lesson I took from that show. Listen to me, that's a stretch of a lesson from a concept of like where I wrote the concept for a skate video because I did not think my skateboarding was going to be the quality to showcase compared to the other pros. So I wrote a funny skid of, hey, when we go to skate places in the street, security guards kick us out, but now they can talk to my security guard. I could have never thought in a million years that that would have turned into a television

show. But I maximized sort of the opportunity and it discovered an entirely new way for me to create both content and revenue and understand how to use media platforms to monetize them, which then scaled into a fantasy factory, which was a show of just monetizing brand partnerships, and then, you know, ridiculousness, which was a show of just monetizing brand partnerships, and then, you know, ridiculousness, which was ultimately an annuity to that became, you know, multiple businesses off of that. But, you know, I think what it is, as opposed to a resource, as an entrepreneur, it is this idea of, like, you can be very very creative and opportunity can present itself by creating

something that goes viral in a small community and then you scale that to a bigger world. It opens up a lot of different opportunities for you. Yeah, and it's also I found in my life that whenever I'm like, you know, it would be crazy. What if I did X, right? What if I did X, right? Like, what if I did X? You're not normally supposed to do X, but I found that when I do it, it opens up like my wife and I were sitting at the cafe across the street, and she was like, you know, be crazy, what if we bought that building and turned it into a bookstore? And I was like, yeah, we should, you know. And I think most of the time when people hear crazy ideas,

they like to entertain it, but they won't actually do it. And to a certain degree, that's kind of your brand, is like, you take the fantasy or there wouldn't be crazy if, and then you actually, you make it real. Yeah, and look, I think the difference with sort of how I've evolved is, when you look at the bookstore and you look at, hey, we should turn that into a bookstore.

Well, that is a lot more complex than just, yeah, let's do it, honey, because the reality of it is is like, now you have to understand, well, do we have the time to do that? How much will it cost? What about collecting all those books and the people do we understand how we have the time to do that? How much will it cost? Like, what about collecting all those books? And the people do we understand how to hire the people to operate it?

And what do we do if the income slows down? And then like, there's all this complexities. And then you have to answer that towards, well, is this what I want to take on in life? A lot of times, you know, you would take that on. And you would be lost in the idea of how cool it would be and never take into the first and second order consequences of what it will do to your energy and your time, your money and your soul to actually execute that.

And I think that that's the growth for me over the, many years was ultimately, I used to say I had the ability to do anything, so I did everything, but I stood for nothing. And ultimately, I just wasn't happy, you know? And when I really started looking at everything with this sort of holistic approach of like, I want to design a life that I live and how does this play a part in my overall life and how I'm spending my time and how that time is delivering energy for me and ultimately, what am I, what is my mind thinking about in all of this and my enjoying the process of life and then began to put all these big ideas through that filter, then I began to grow bigger and bigger things with less and less effort that led me to a more harmonious high quality existence rather than just like

the next bright shiny object that I would chase. Everything has purpose compared to what I was like back then. Yeah, one of the things I'm on guard with is like, so I get into what I get into because I love writing. That's what I love doing. And then if you're successful at that thing, you get a lot of opportunities and requests to do not that thing, right?

Hey, do you wanna come talk here? Hey, do you wanna consult on this? Hey, do you wanna write my book for me instead of one of your books? You basically get these ancillary or adjacent opportunities that can be more lucrative than the thing that you love, but they leave very little time for the thing that you love. So I'm curious, as you've gone on, you've explored all these different things, how is that, how has that changed your relationship with the thing you've been doing since you were like a tiny kid, the actual pleasure and presence and obsession with like just messing around

with this piece of wood with wheels on it? Yeah, I mean, look, it's not even a part of my life, you know what I mean? I don't even like, it's not, it was something that I enjoyed and loved to do, but my passion has always been creating, You know what I mean? I started my first company at 16 years old. And so it's like my actual, you know, sort of like drive to create different things is what's actually at the core. You know what I mean? And to me, it's, you know, when you think about, like, you have this access, you wrote, these books, now people want you to do all these things, it's sort of your time and energy.

And for me, I ended up deciding I would never compromise that ever again. And okay, well, how can I do that? Well, first of all, I need a certain amount of money, right? For me, I needed to earn $200 million and have $100 million invested, that generated five to seven million in passive income. So I had to get to there first because you're the first thing that you do is you make decisions based off of that money. Well what would you do if money was never an object? So that was sort of my first target. And then I began to master time. I began to track and plan out all of the rhythms of my life, like your holidays and birthdays and everything to do

with your life is in this rhythm. So I began to design my time and get better and better at designing my time around what gave me energy. And I would use qualitative data. How do I feel about my life work what gave me energy, and I would use qualitative data. How do I feel about my life work and health every day, is you were to tend to give me insights to what I needed to make changes on so that I could lead to a more probable higher energy future.

And I just did that as a process on an ongoing basis, where today, I live every moment of the day in a very high level of energy and joy by design. And then I have nothing pulling me towards dwelling or pushing me towards worrying. So I get to live in the ultra-present, basically all of my life. And the only time I drift out of the ultra-present is when I'm creating a better future, which gives me the dopamine, which is exciting, or I'm rectifying something that has happened in the past as life comes at you.

But for the most part, I've defended all aspects of my time and energy through a series of systematic evolution that allows me to live in a place of happiness every day. How much of your day do you feel like is yours? Or are you one of those people where like every minute is like, you know, when you talk to someone, they're like, yeah, I can talk tomorrow between 11.07 and 11.13 a.m. Are you one of those people? Are you more of like a white space? I take it where it leads to me guys. Depending on what it is, right?

Because you've got to think, the moment you take on a new project, you can see it in the second, third order consequences of your time. So you've got to be incredibly careful. And I, to me, the key to happiness is perpetually evolving into your limitless potential. But if you don't have the time to actually reflect and like actually think about what you're learning as you're going and be able to take that evolution and apply it to some sort of action, it serves no purpose in you. And so for me, I am incredibly flexible on my time usage depending on how I feel and what I feel like doing. So I will, you know, I'm working on a software, a book, and a philosophy for two and a half years now.

And I paid the author a half a million dollars, I've paid a few million dollars to this development team to work on the software, I have the entire team that I'm just spent paying on an ongoing basis to just ideate, because I have no pressure to when I need to get it done, but I only work about 25% of my time because I spend the majority of time with my wife and kids, or working on my health, right? So, like, you use your money to buy your time,

and then you stay incredibly flexible based off of how you feel, because the goal is to enjoy every single moment of your life, not just find moments that you get to enjoy. And so for me, not only is that extraordinary discipline, but it's also highly adaptive in the same way. It's funny. I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people

haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever. And I go, let me guess, you listen, audiobooks don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, and of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app.

You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover And as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog including the latest best sellers and new releases You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites exclusive new series exciting new voices in audio You can check out stillness is the key the daily dad. I just recorded so that's up on audible now Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audiobooks so all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to

500 500. Is this thing all? Check one two one two. Hey y'all I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur and a Virgo. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do.

So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby This Is Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad.

I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, Brian Members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today. Yeah, I'm always surprised people are like, I'm doing this for my family. That's why I work so hard. And then you're like, but how often do you see that family? And they're like, well, I'm gone, you know, 250 days a year or something. And you're like, that doesn't sound like a rich life if you sold your time to someone else.

But again, it's when you don't design all aspects of your existence and put some sort of quantifiable measurement against why you're doing it all, that leads to where you're living in your ideal energy state. And for the most part, and this is how I used to be when I was younger, I thought if I did another television show, if I did another company, if I just made the money, that would be, then I could be happy and balanced. You know? But instead, I started at zero and then built a balanced harmonious existence and then grew beyond wealth beyond my wildest dreams that transitioned me into a multi-generational

thinker. And I did all of that in this beautiful, peaceful, harmonious way because as I grew and evolved, I got better and better at life. I got better and better at being balanced. I got better and better at my use of time. And then I'm just in this continual state of evolution and growth on all aspects of my life but never sacrificing anything ever. And keep in mind this, I shoot 336 episodes of the television a year. It is 4% of my time. I have taken that production and automated it and optimized it to where I can shoot eight episodes of television in five hours and shoot four times a month for 10 months a year.

But the output of the ROI of that is, you know, like dollar for minute is so extraordinary. But that's only because you have been someone who's meticulously learned how to master your time, energy, and mind share through continuous development of systems and automation and optimization of those systems. No, I totally agree. I mean, there's still a talk about this. Enica talks about how, you know, he's like, life isn't short. We just waste a lot of it.

And I think a lot of people work a lot. They just work very, very inefficiently. And they congratulate themselves for the grind, you know, the 20-hour days or the, you know, 100-hour weeks. And then you're like, yeah, but there's only like 20% of that that moved the needle in any way. The rest was fat that you could have cut or conversations that you didn't want to have or boundaries you didn't want to draw, you could have done that better. Yeah, and look, and think about this,

if Marcus is the things that you think about determine the quality of your mind, right? So even if you are trying to find work-life balance and you're trying to work less, it's like if your mind is constantly being pulled back to dwelling in the past or worrying about the future, like your mind, your mind-share can be equally as damaging, regardless of how healthy you are, and how you try to spend more time with your family, if you're constantly being pulled by all of these forces and you don't find harmony in your existence, like you're never going to find that piece.

And to me, you have to design it and you have to get better and better at it, right? Like if we know mastery is this extraordinarily important aspect of having a high quality life. Well, look, you've got to master you. And if that's one of the core tenets of stoicism, it's like, all right, well, how do you do that in the modern world? Well, you've got to understand what money

means to you and master money. You've got to understand what time means to you and master time. You've got to understand what gives and takes energy and builds your life around that. You have to learn to master your existence because the better you get at mastering your existence, the easier life becomes because with mastery comes ease of operation. You know, you know, you have to be disciplined to be great at anything, but discipline is the beginning. When you're disciplined, it takes so much energy. Then it turns to habits. Habits take so much energy. When it finally turns to a way of life and

intuitively who you are, where it's now how you subconsciously act, that's when you are living in a more masterful state where life and discipline and habits are easy because you no longer think about them. Yeah, I mean, can Ferris or popularize this phrase, but you keep using the word, so I assume you agree. He talks about this idea of lifestyle design. If you're not going to figure out what you want your life to look like, and I think more specifically, what you want your days to look like because your life is made up of days. Then you're just winging it. And you're really at the mercy

of like what other people say, what other people do, your moods, you know, the weather. You've got to come up with a plan, a system. And then you repeat that plan and system. There's flexibility within it. But you're not just like, ah, what should I do today? That's it, and but you gotta think about it. It's like quarter, it's mornings, to days, to weeks, to months, to quarters, to years. It's always in this rhythm, and guess what? You are changing every day,

and the world is changing around you. So it's like you have to develop the skill to perpetually evolve and guide your evolution because that's where self mastery exists. You don't just all of a sudden get there. It's not like shooting pool or some other more binary skill that you can master. Like once you get really good at it, that's that. It's like the world is evolving and you're evolving, so you and you're changing. You have kids, like what you used to enjoy to do, like I used to enjoy the skateboard.

I skateboarding to the demise of my six year old who called me a quitter yesterday, he's like, you quit skateboarding? I said, son, I was a pro for 20 years. And I retired. But you just continually evolve and change in your wants and needs. And I can say that who I am as a person changed is my success scaled. Right? Like I, when you, when you evolve to a place where you literally like can do whatever you want, right?

Like it makes you really begin to understand the choices that you will, the things you will say yes to and no to, because you really have the true flexibility in making that decision, and that in itself becomes this new skill to develop and look at, because then you have to think about everything you do through the lens of what long-term impact does it have on my time and energy. And then sometimes, some things you work on for years, in my case, I've been designing a house for 10 years. I've been working on multiple different ongoing projects for years that I allowed to overlap. Why I continue to build and launch businesses on an ongoing basis, still shoot television and continue to develop my philosophy and shoot the other things. These are all these things that I enjoy that are both short term and long term and sort of understanding the life that legacy I want to create long term.

And then bang, right down in the middle. I don't ever sacrifice my energy or my time to do anything as it relates to being balanced and happy and spending time with my family and picking my kids up at school and dropping my kids off and taking them to karate and taking my wife to date nights and movie nights and breakfast dates and to Thursday night talk nights and Wednesday night movie night tonight

You know, it's like I've built all of this into a rhythm that my family can feel this balance and this energy of what's possible and I want to be an archetype to people of this is how you live a harmonious existence Not and be hyper-successful rather than trying to find work-life balance and being ultra-successful. And then like, oh, now I got to spend, now I should go on vacation. You know what I mean? Type of mod. Well, like a life is made up of days, a day is made up of chunks.

I think the morning being the most essential chunk of the day, like I feel like if you get the morning right, a pretty good day inevitably follows. What does morning look like for you? What's your morning routine? Well, look, my mornings are dependent on if I get up at 3.30 or I get up at 4.30. You know, a lot of times, like luckily for me, my wife started doing like 5 a.m. calls for her business. So she started wanting to go to bed earlier. I need about seven hours of sleep. So if we get to bed at like 8.30 or 9, I'm getting up at 3.30 or 4.

And then I start my day by sending her an email of every single thing that I'm doing that day I mean that's generated from my chief of staff and then I put a love quote on it so that she has insight to everything that I'm doing In that day. I have my coffee pre-made the night before so it's brew and when I get up I Take a eight-ounce shot of salt water and do five minutes of red light therapy before I head downstairs and have my first cup of coffee

before I center, then I center that email and then I go through all my time from the day before and fill out how my day looked to track all my time because I basically, I fill out all my day looked to track all my time because I basically, I fill out all my time in the calendar that was blank and it all has tags that pump into a dashboard that shows me where I use all my time. Then I go back to my daily data where every day I track,

did I brain-trained, did I meditate, did I get up before five, did I get in the gym, did I eat clean, meaning I had no sugar, no carbs, no nothing but lean meat and vegetables and did I not drink and did I take my supplements. Those are what I track each day and then I go through and fill out all of that then. I fill out how do I feel zero to ten about my life work and health That basically make up the data set that I have for years, right of years of collecting this data So I could show you now and I sent it to you

Yeah, you sent me your discipline spreadsheet. It was amazing What what that all that stuff pulls out of my calendar into these dashboards? So I've gamified my discipline. I know that last month, I did all of that 100%. You know what I mean? I know that there's not every day off for me as to me every day is amazing in that process as part of that sort of day.

But then I brain train and then I qualitatively rate the brain training to see how my mind feels each day Then I meditate on a manifestation meditation And then I wake my kids up Take my kids to school and then meet the trainer at the house at 7.45. That's how basically every day for me starts Wow, do you do I? starts. Wow. Do you, I guess all that data and all that writing is kind of a form of journaling, you're creating messages to yourself based on what you did, but do you have a journaling practice also or is this mostly what you just sort of do in your head? Yeah, you look, my journaling

practice is through the lens of milestones, right? Like, I'm in this sort of rapid state of evolution and in this continual sort of place of learning and growing and shifting. So I do my five and ten year or a five and fifteen year planning every quarter. And then I update those documents on an ongoing basis, and then I collect milestones of major thoughts and major things that are going on that are connected to it because the beauty of it when you look at it all. When you layer it over top, you see how like the happier I am, the how much more wealthier I am, you see how much more disciplined I am, you

just see how, like when you layer the blood work on top of that, when you look at all the sets of data that I could lay over top of that sort of core growth of evolution and discipline, when you see it all together, the most profound aspect of it is that when I started doing qualitative data, asking myself about my life, how I felt zero to 10 about my life, health, and work, the numbers were in 12s and 13s, where today they're at 23s. And it's like you really can see in all of these numbers, how much truly happy you are.

I can show you in the numbers that I went from working 36% of my time down to 26% of my time. Like, and as you master time, time slows down. And then you understand the value of time so deeply that you're so precious with it And then here's one of the greatest assets of mastering time There is no point in my life that I look at my kids and wonder where the time went There is no point in my life where I ever contemplate the idea of Where did the time go because I know exactly where all of it has

gone. And I created, designed and optimized it with the intent to enjoy it and experiencing it. And so I feel each and every year of my life as what another extraordinary year in the human experience. And I can't wait to continue to see what the future holds, because as tight as I plan it, I continue to evolve and change on such a level, and the universe continues to conspire to bring more opportunities and more interesting things that fit inside the perimeter of my willingness to dedicate the time to these things that allow me to continually live this very exciting, rewarding, fulfilling life. And what do I want to do? I want to live one million hours. That's 114 years and 54 days. You know what I mean? And so I know that I got 8,760 a year and that if I do something for one hour a day, that it's 4% of my life.

So watching TV for one hour a day with my wife, I know, boy, that's a bit, I watch two hours of TV, that's 8% of my life. It's so much more significant when you think about shooting 336 episodes of television, it's only 4% of your life, and really the value of your time, when you understand it more intuitively, you just use it in a much different way. No, I do a slightly less, slightly, much, much, much scaled down version of what you do. Part of my journaling practice. I use this little journal. It's called One Line a Day. And this is my one from 2017 to

2000, I guess, 21. It's there's one line per day. So, but I think what I'm picking up that I think is valuable and what you're talking about in time management, you can't manage your time in the abstract or journal in the sort of generalities. You have to have marks that you're measuring against. You have to be where was I last year, where was I the year before, what was I doing at last December by tracking what you're doing, you're able to see how you're doing relative to that point, whether you're doing the same things that you should be doing, whether

you're stuck in the same holes, whether you're plateaued in some way, you have to be able to, you can't just be, hey, I write some stuff down every day. I think I deal you have a system or a flow that allows you to check where you are going relative to where you have been recently and not so recently. Right, and look, it's no different than investing in stocks and watching your stock portfolio. Sure. Like, you know, it's like these quantified things that we apply on these simple to easy to understand things we're okay with, but trying to figure out a way

to quantify our happiness and our joy and our overall quality of life has been abstract and there's no framework for it, right? And I think once I really developed that framework personally and then began to visualize it and use it, I could now now gather the insights that I needed to make the change that we're all leading to a better life. But I digress towards this idea that,

I just think journaling is that of something I'm not doing that would be extraordinarily valuable for the reflective side of like my existence, right? Like, it's like, it's almost like it took me so many years before I discovered meditation. This conversation today is going to like make me, has unlocked for me. It's like, man, just add into your world of just writing down one thing, right? Because one thing that me and my wife do as an exercise is each week, we write down what we want to celebrate that week.

And then we read them at the end of every year. And man, it is. You forget, you forget stuff that was awesome. And you take it for granted. That's, but it's, it's like just even that exercise where it's, it's what do you want to celebrate this week? It's like going back and looking at the wins and it's really funny when you celebrate

something that ends up like not being what you expected or, or, you know, it's, it's, or it never even happened, you know what I mean? Like it's so fascinating. But now we've done this all these years and, and then we put them in a wine bottle, shake them out at the end of the year, but then I give them to the chief of staff, and now I have this list of all of them from all the years, which ends up creating this written body of work

that's representative of our lives and that moment in time. And that's that power of journaling that gives you insight to your mind, that for me, in this just sitting here talking to you, just hit me like the hardest ton of bricks ever. Where I'm like, man, you have got to like, well, how many more times do you got to hear

the word journal before you start doing it? Because I feel like when I originally journaled, I would write these comprehensive, like, 30-minute-long writing out all of these things that would just take up too much time and energy. And you have changed my life here today, because it's gonna be just one line, and I'm gonna do it every single day

from this point forward for the rest of my life. I want you to know that. Hey there, listeners. While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way,

like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondaria. I love that, I love that. Well, I think you already are journaling in just a different form, but I think you would like this. And even if you guys,

well, we're just collecting the gratitude thing you're doing with your wife, I think that would be awesome too. Well, okay, so speaking of reflecting on stuff, here's something I'm curious about. So you have this goal, you have this idea that you have to get to a certain amount of wealth with a certain amount of passive income that will free you up to do stuff.

I think we often, we have these goals, like I'll talk to people, they have a number. They're like, my number is X. I am always really curious what it feels like when they get to that number. So what was that experience like for you? Was it amazing? Was it anti-swipe? Yes. Did you learn something? Look, it's, you change as a person. You change as a human being. Because you got to think about this. My goal, I needed to earn $200 million,

which is so, like for most people, even for me, it was like, it's ambitious. It's an incomprehensible number. Yeah, it's, and for most people, it's insane. Now for me, I did in a self-assessment of like, what does money mean to me? Well, money's my lifestyle.

What is my lifestyle? Well, I know that I'm probably going to want to spend between two and three million dollars a year, right? So that's that's what I started first with first, which is a lot of money. Right? And so it's like now I'm being realistic, but that's who I am, and that's sort of the identity. Then I began to look at asset classes. Well, okay, well, how, what would what would I need to do to generate that an passive way but still grow it? Then I discovered multi-family syndication, right?

So now I'm like, okay, you put, for every million dollars, you get seven to 10% and fully taxed, appreciated cash. That is basically tax-free. And then that would be my goal, right? Now, if I get to, you know, $100 million that I'm going to have $7 million, even if even if my, that gives me the ability to scale up to the bigger lifestyle, but I should never need more than that, you know, whatever it is. And so initially, I wanted to build a house for 35 million.

I wanted to keep 15 million in cash at all times and keep my expenses at 3 million and I wanted 50 million in real estate. Okay, and that would kick off, you know, the 7% that would cover everything. And then if something were to happen, I had the cash sit in there. And man, it's like when you have a $100,000 invested

in when your goal is getting to 50 million, it feels good because it's like, it wasn't like, when I got to 800,000, when I got to 1.2 million, when I got to 20 million I was like man I could I'm kind of set for life right now When I got to 50 million it was like I can't believe I made it When I'm I'm just at the edge of a hundred million and I'm like I feel like a completely different human being Because it's one thing to have this and now to give you an idea

I have a blended passive income and strategy that includes high yield savings account, ETF, dividend stocks, and bonds portfolio. This very low single digit tax liability, and then this growth and security that's related to real estate investments and bonds and index type funds. But I still made $100 million last year in normal income. Do you understand what I'm saying? but I still made $100 million last year in normal income. Do you understand what I'm saying? So it's like, forget about,

because I had no pressure that I had grown to that level, that so even when I make that level of money and pay an exorbitant amount of taxes on that, I still don't, I'm not changing the way that I live. I'm not necessarily doing anything like extraordinary. I am just like growing and operating the plan that I created. You know what I'm saying? And then it freed up my mind to be able to create opportunities

that created much larger scale than I could have ever imagined. But I did all of that with never sacrificing my time. You know what I mean? Or my energy, right? And in the sense of like what the type of world that I created and why. So I go back to this idea, even for someone like you, is you have to have that same financial strategy

and where you're headed and why, because what's actually on the other side of it is this incredible feeling of security and peace. And we talk about financial freedom, but it's financial harmony that I have, where like I understood why I wanted money, I understood where I wanted to put it and what its purpose was, and then I understood my strategies on how I was going to make it, but I was not going to sacrifice my time and energy. So when I built companies, I did not operate these companies, I would co-find them, create them, finance them,

and bring them to market and grow them, and then have other people operate them. So I built the entire system in strategy, and then was able to realize it, but it was all built around what was the ideal version of my life, right? And when you reach that level, like, you change You, you, that's why I transitioned from self preservation to generational preservation and began to look at like, man, I'm going to build a family bank structure that I'm going to

give access and opportunity to deertex for thousands of years. I'm going, you know, it's like it changed me as a person, but it gave me that much more clarity and that much more desire to be more disciplined in an experienced life on an even higher level. Right? Like that's the other side of it. You would think that would have, there's no rest in that because I evolved here and I can see how much further I can grow and I just want to keep getting better and better at life,

because that's actually what I enjoy doing the most. You know? So multi-family syndication, that's like real estate deals, basically people coming in doing like hard money stuff, or... Yes, but you basically want to do is you, it's an LP and GP structure, but you're in a single LLC,

so you own the building, so you get the depreciation, and then you 1031 exchange it when you sell it, but you give up 20% of the profits to the general partner who's an expert at operating the business or the building. So if you put in 10 million now, you get 700,000 in tax-free cash a year for that 10 million then when that and five 10 years they sell

The building and now your 10 million and equity is worth 20 million instead of paying taxes on that you roll that into your next building and now your basis for your 7% of cash is now 20 million instead of 10 million But you don't it it takes no energy. And, you know, another great book in the richest man in Babylon, you're putting your money with like masters of this type of investment class that have 30-year track histories of never losing principal and 18% IRRs through the 2008 collapse of real estate cycle. You're even looking at it

through that lens so that you're even making the decision on where you deploy capital with mastery rather than just one of your homies that wants to buy a building. You know the name? Sure, sure. No, I do. I think that's's really interesting, and I've done some of it myself. I think some people, particularly, like, artistic types or whatever, they have, like, an aversion to thinking that way, because it feels dirty, or it feels complicated, it feels like a distraction. But I think, ideally, you get to a place where you have enough skill, you have enough understanding

without a sort of save money, invest money, grow up passively, that then you're freer in your business life to do, you know, if you want to do X, but nobody wants to fund it, you can fund it yourself. If you, if you want to do the more artistically pure version of something, and you know it's not going to sell as much, you're like, I don't care, I'm not doing this for money. My money comes from over here. It's like you're creating in a sense, like a trust fund for yourself, right? It's like your parents didn't give it to you.

You earned it over here with this different side of your brain. And like when I went to write my first book about Stoke Philosophy, my publisher was not like, that sounds like a real money maker, right? Like I was able to take less money, I was able to let that book grow slowly over time because investments I'd made in real estate, because of jobs I'd taken, savings I had, I had, like financial freedom isn't this thing that means you don't have to work anymore. I think what it means is you get to make pure and better work decisions because you're

not thinking only in terms of maximizing income. But forget about making pure and better work decisions. Think about your mind. It gives you so much back to your mind because it's never something that that's one of the heaviest things that steals Mind share in between working on what you love is the stress of finances and not understanding and where we go And should I do this because a lot of times I get offered stuff all the time that it's like insane amount of money that I don't it's not even like a Question of whether or not I would do it absolutely not. It's not worth the time. I don't care what it is.

I don't need more fame. Like I don't need like, when I did this last television deal, like I'm like, if it didn't take such little amount, if I hadn't optimized this thing to where I could shoot that much television in that little of time, I wouldn't do it, right? Like it's, but when I step back and look at like what I what what that level of money can provide for the long term and that they're

willing to continue to pay it to me for a very long period of time. And I've just continued to optimize shooting it so it takes very little energy. It's adding to my longer vision of like how do I continue to make impact beyond myself but without the effort. But it's mind share over everything. That's the thing that I... That's a great part, Dave. And here's the thing about it. It doesn't have to be complex like mine is. thing. That's the thing that I... That's a great point, Dave. And here's the thing about it. When you... It doesn't have to be complex like mine is.

You can just straight up and down. I'm going to spend, you know, 50 grand a year. And my goal is to put, like, make 150 and put 50 away in an index felon that doubles every seven or eight years. And then when I get to 1.5 million, I now have enough money to live on forever. And yeah, then when you get into the deal

that's gonna make you 400, then you're like perfect. I'll stay at 50. And then I'm gonna put in 200. And now instead of it being 15 years from now, it's now gonna be six years. But nobody thinks of money through that lens of like, it is both security, mind share, and your your your way of being that what would you do if

money was not an object? Like is is something that most people don't ever ever have in their lifetime as an option because it takes a certain amount of discipline and I quit high school at 17. You know what I mean? I wasn't educated and don't understand money. I was a creative entrepreneur and I built company after company after company that came and went and I made millions and lost millions because I never understood money. I didn't even learn money till I was 40.

I'm 48 years old. At 42, I had $600,000 in the strategy. You know what I mean? By like in a short amount of time, I had reached that goal because I had built the strategy to do. But I didn't build this over over 20 years. I learned all of this in the last six or seven years. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. The number doesn't have to be, and almost for almost everyone listening, should not be anywhere in the ballpark of 200 million. It could be a retirement account of 200,000, but you're 26 years old or 28

years old and you know that if you just keep doing what you're doing, that's going to get you somewhere where you want to go. I think the trouble is we tell ourselves, hey, if I get to X, if I do this, I won't have to think about money anymore. And then the mind, you have to have a certain amount of discipline to go, I don't need to think about this, right? Like a lot of people, my friend, Remi, say he talks about this quite a bit. We have this problem where we go, hey, I'm earning a lot, I'm saving a lot. Now I have a lot, and I'm still sweating, whether I can upgrade my drink at Starbucks, like we have trouble being too,

a lot of people have trouble, the discipline that made them successful, made them good at money, they have trouble turning off, when they should not have to sweat a $3 decision, as he says. He's saying focus on the $30,000 decision, right? You go to your job every day and you're not maximizing your earning potential and then

you're kicking yourself that you could have got gas, $0.15 cheaper down the road. You're not looking at the variable that really moves the needle for you. But again, when you think about that, there's so many things that are pulling. There's so many things that are pulling. Because you're already in a bad place of being unbalanced or operating from a place of fear if you even think like that. Because again, think about what that is. When it's dwelling, where your mind shifts down to dwelling, it's pulling energy out of you. You know what I'm saying?

It pushes up into worrying, like where you have to live in the state of rectifying the past, being future, future past, or future present, or present in order to be in this higher energetic state. And that's different people's makeups is their relationship with money and at the end of the day you just want financial harmony. You just want it you want to be feel good about money and under you need to learn it and understand it. Anxiety comes from when you just don't understand it and don't have a plan and your only thing that you understand is how to have a job and hope you keep that job and pay for your expenses. But then you don't take care of yourself. You have bad relationships. You have trauma. Now you have low energy and you've got to lose yourself in alcohol and watching Netflix.

And then you're back in the job again and then you wish you had a different job. But you're only hoping and wishing because you don't have the energy to ever create a better future for yourself. Like you get trapped in your system. Then those, you know, we all are creating systems on an ongoing basis. It's not just about creating good systems that lead you to better habits. We intuitively drive everything into a systematic way of being in order to make it easier for us to operate. And some people's systems are literally like being at the job, hating the job, wanting to get to their friends, getting alcohol, eating a pizza, watching it like Netflix for two hours, regretting

staying up two hours late, being tired of work again, sleeping, like going to bed early, over sleeping, then meeting a friend like your system is built to keep you in this perpetual state of anxiety and lack of clarity. And then you have moments and you're like, I'm going to motivate myself and do it now, but your system and your subconscious has been built in a way where you can only muster up a little bit of motivation. You snap right back into your same triggers and your same rhythms. You know, I like to say like, you know, you can't change one part of your life without changing it all.

The same way that you can't design one part of your life without designing it all. Because you are a fully integrated, multi-dimensional being that is made up of a series of systems that create your existence, that integrated to the world around you. And if you don't look at it like that, you're just gonna be continually like trying to create pockets of happiness or pockets of success rather than be a successful human being.

You know? Well, we started this marveling at how the Stoics had talked about the same stuff 2,000 years ago. I think it's pretty amazing given what you're just saying. One of my favorite quotes from Senica, he says, life without design is erratic. If you don't have a design, if you don't have a plan,

if you don't have a system, you're just winging it. And you don't do a good job winging it when you're tired, when you're overworked, when you're distracted, when there's addictive substances and apps and things out there, like you gotta create a system and you gotta be able to step back and see that from a distance so you can, you can, as you're saying, see things in generational terms

as opposed to just immediate terms. You gotta get that perspective. And I think that's what journaling does, what reading does, what great podcasts do, is they allow you to step back, see it from a distance, make a plan, and then not be jerked around by every impulse or instinct. Yeah, I think, hey, that's another thing

that I love so much about like, you know, from Marcus's point of like having so much But this idea being disciplined against all that you have access to and you could actually do is is a much more Better way of living you know the mean and and and it's this idea of even for him still knowing that like You're still trying to like not let you're trying to get to a place where nothing affects you in that you're the one living with the joyful heart, you know, holy living with the joyful heart. Like, it's like don't let these outside forces end up affecting your joy and your well-being, but you have to design your life in a way that

you begin to grow away from the interdependency of these outside forces and eliminate the ones that actually disrupt you and actually sway the way that you live. And you have to do that through some sort of process or understanding, and that's what the qualitative data did for me. You know, by just asking myself how I felt about these parts of my life, you begin to see the things that you must change. And over time, I built defenses around my existence that today I have very little interdependencies that could ever actually disrupt my energy.

And it is why I spend the majority of my life in a place of joy and rarely ever even have a negative thought because I just simply don't have anything negative to think about. Dude, I love this so much. And like I said, your show is actually a very big influence on me in a bunch of good ways and I'm so glad we got to meet and hope to see you in person again one of these days. No doubt. Thanks for having me on Thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes That would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon

Music App today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. you