The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Road to Becoming a Billionaire Pt.2 (on Iced Coffee Hour) | Ep 663

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

"If you're in business or really just in life in general, you're bound to have expectations that are not met.” Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Iced Coffee Hour to share valuable insights on life and business strategies, focusing on stress management, personal finance, and the importance of passion-driven living. Key topics include the power of expectation reframing, the necessity of responsible spending habits, and the significance of perception in overcoming adversities. This engaging discussion provides listeners with actionable advice on enhancing their worth, developing a content creation system, and leading a life that dismisses external criticism. This is part 2 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Follow Iced Coffee Hour on:➤ Instagram | Apple | Spotify➤ Check out the video episode on YouTube!Timestamps:(2:20) - Advice for employees: tying your job to revenue(6:47) - The role of social media in life(14:33) - The philosophy of life and business(17:11) - The dynamics of relationships and business(28:18) - The importance of individual experiences in relationships(32:50) - The grand plan for content creation(36:29) - The new office space and its impact on work culture(51:07) - Perspectives on life, work, and dealing with stressFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I usually play with time and space in terms of trying to reframe whatever the issue is that I'm upset about and think like, what is the expectation that I have and how is it unmet? And how can I shift that expectation? And what if the expectation is really different? Using those things on a regular basis, I think have allowed me to make better decisions and be a little bit less emotional or reactive to bad news. And I think if you compound that like small amount of space that you can create for yourself for an extended period of time, you can make better decisions. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer and how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. Hope you enjoy and subscribe. For people who are looking to get started, what do you think is the best business for people to get into right now?

I think the best business for someone to start if they've never started a business before is something that they already have tangential experience with. And so usually you have parents, friends, family, first jobs, that you have some industry knowledge. So if you look at like Y Combinator, for example, they look for founders who have lived with the problem and or have industry experience. And so if you have both of those things, like the likelihood that you will be successful with the endeavor that you're going in, is significant.

higher because there's a huge learning curve to entering any new industry. And if you can just pay down some of that ignorance tax, even if the opportunity vehicle isn't the perfect one, you will still have a significantly higher likelihood of winning. And one of the big fallacies of your first business is that it's going to be your last business than it almost never is. And so the idea is like it's much more valuable to get started on something that you have a higher likelihood of success on so that you can get some faster rewards for the behavior of getting into business. And then from there, get some resources, get some skills. And then you can have a better perspective from which to make a jump or a decision on what to do next. And at least that's

my two cents on it. We were at the gym, Jack and I the other day. Actually, two people came us up to us and they said that they love the podcast that we did together. The first one, I think that's how they found the podcast. But that was their both people separate reference that podcast. And one person said, when you're going to have Hormozie back on? I said, well, coincidence. You know, he's coming like the next week. They had a question for you. I told them, I would ask you. So if you ever see. me in person. You want to have me ask Alex or Moses of something. You just ask. He was a W-2 employee. Okay. And he says, you really likes your content and wants to know your advice to people who

aren't selling anything. True. But they're an employee and they want to make more money. They want to get better at what they're doing. How could they apply your advice to them? You have to figure out how your job directly ties to revenue in the business. And if you don't know, ask, like, fundamentally, like if you don't know how your job makes the business money, then ask. And then once you understand how you directly tie to money, then drive towards that. Because fundamentally, every position in the business makes the business more money if the job is well designed. Otherwise, why are you there? Right. I mean, even if you're like, I'm a frontline customer service reps, like, okay, well, how do you, like, if I had to ask that person, like, how do you make the

business money? The answer is, if I do a good job, people will come back and buy again. If I do a good job, we'll have a lower percentage people who will refund. If I do a good job, the business will be able to command higher prices off a word or mouth in the future. Like, these are the things that you can explain and say like, okay, well, then if those are the things that drive revenue, then I'm going to try and focus on those things. And then you can ask your boss, and this is a great question, is what would it take for me to make this? It's not saying I need to make that.

It's just asking them to solve the problem. Like, what would it take for me to earn that? And then they can give you an objective metric. Now, your boss might not be high enough. And then you say, cool, can you ask the person above you? And by doing it that way, you're also being clear, like, I want to make the business more money. And in doing so, I would like a small percentage of the increase that I'm able to bring.

Like, what would it take? And I think that's a great way to have that conversation. Layla, my wife also makes tons of content for like how to ask for raises, how to negotiate that stuff on her channel as a side note. She's more knowledgeable than I am about it. I do think, though, a lot of careers out there will never give you that opportunity. You say, I want to make more money or I want to do more. They're going to say, you get back to your desk.

Just focus. You just focus on that. And there aren't really those opportunities out there. And those situations would you recommend looking for work elsewhere? I think small businesses are a good. opportunity for that stuff. So if you're like in a massive corporation, you can quickly cap out and get like lost in the shuffle if it's this massive org. And so I think it makes sense to go get basically a stamp of approval from maybe a name brand company that you can then leverage into a smaller business,

that you'll have a lot more impact, a lot more opportunity for growth. Most entrepreneurs are far more receptive to anyone who says, I will help you make more money. So again, if you can change your environment, you'll often be able to change your behavior. By the way, I meant to ask this earlier, I noticed we had a bit of a problem, actually. It was on Instagram. Yeah. I noticed you're not following me back on Instagram. Oh, shit.

Yeah. Uh-oh. So, following a lot of other people on. Yeah. As something that's bad. Yeah. And what do you have to say about that? I think it's terrible.

I only follow comedy and philosophy accounts for the most part. Comedy and philosophy accounts? Yeah. The only two truth tellers. And what do you get from those accounts by watching? I enjoy it. Yeah. Both give me context on life.

Some make me laugh. Some make me think. Who are your favorite comedians? Oh man, I have so many. I mean, I follow a lot of comedians. Like, I basically follow any comedian I see on my newsfeed who makes comedy regular. Like, if I click over their page and they feel like one comedy video and a bunch of like

not videos, then I won't follow them. But if they make regular comedy clips, I will almost guarantee to follow them no matter how big they are. I like Andrew Schultz, Whitney Cummings, Sam Morrill, Mark Norman. I like Neimanaz. Matt Rife has obviously been learning up. Yeah, he's great. There's so many.

Bill Burr, Nate Barkatsy. There's so many. I'm just like naming names off the top. I like, I like a lot of comedy. I mean, if this comedy, I like it. Do you like Norm MacDonald's comedy? Yeah. I love Norman.

I mean, I'm a cheap date when it comes to comedy. Like, basically the only thing I don't like is like lazy comedy. Just like, like, like, crude for the sake of being crude, like that stuff. I'm not like, I don't think it's like Theo Vaughn. That's great. It's great. Not of that. He's also another great comedian.

And yeah, that's, I really like comedy a lot. And it would like live shows or do you, do you listen to comedy podcast ever. I don't listen to comedy podcasts. I watch their routines and I go to shows and I watch their clips. Yeah, the comedy podcasts are hilarious. I think the podcast are 20 times better than live shows. Oh, Tom Seguera, Burke Reichster. I mean, there's a ton of this. I mean, there's a ton of this. I mean, there's so many. I think big Joe, Christian, small, but I actually really love his stuff. There's so many. Yeah. I prefer the podcast. I prefer the podcast. Interesting. Good to know. I don't actually just don't listen to podcasts in general. I'm not a

podcaster. I think like the, the candid comedy in a podcast is 10 times better than rehearsed Contextual. Yeah, yeah, because they have to, like, the bit has to be funny every time and every single place. Yeah. With a cold audience. But like, if you're warmed up with like things that got said earlier and it's like relevant to the moment, like, they can absolutely be, you know, hilarious. But no, I don't listen to podcasts ever. I listen to Elon Musk every time he goes on Joe Rogan. Okay. But I watched it really. So what sort of media do you consume? Twitter or X, ever, I can, that's my most active platform. That's one that I'm on like by far the most. Is it you that tweets? Yeah. It's me on every tweet. That's you everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. things me. I manage everything. And what philosophy content do you like to consume? Are there certain people that are practicing? All the ancients. So it's the ancient. Anybody who's dead. If you're dead, I like you. That's the way that you give validity for. Well, I mean, I mean, you know, Epictetus, Seneca, like some of the Stoics. I mean, I like those guys. And if some of the darker, you got Dostoevsky and some of the other dudes. If they're dead, though, how do they post? Great question. What? I think it's like excerpts from us. I was trying to

make a joke. This is stupid. Fair enough. Good. Good, Graham. It should be a comedian. Maybe he'll follow you there. Classic shrewd.

Classic shrewd, you know. Don't call me shrewd, man. For context, guys, I got this haircut this morning. And Graham said I looked like Dwight Shrewt. Off the rip. He didn't even say like nice haircut. It's like, you know, it's not like a compliment sandwich. It was just like a straight for Shrew.

Do we have any glasses? I am not putting on glasses. It would actually be, dude, if you had a, if you had a tie on in like a slightly grayish brown suit, you'd slay it. Oh, thank you. You'd think I'd just walk around on the strip. I'd just get approached by women.

People would be trying to take pictures with you. They'd be like, oh my God. I just really don't think I look like Dwight's truth that much. But maybe I could be, maybe I could be wrong. Maybe I should put throwing a hat or something, I guess. I think you should change your Tinder profile. To this?

Put the suit on, put the glasses on and just say like, here's the thing. If you own it, it's attractive. And I learned this from you. You said that one time, you were in the car with some frat brother. And the frat brother was like making out with some girl in the back of the car.

And he was like, what was it, chewing tobacco or something at the same time? And you're like, dude, how is she not disgusted by you right now? And he was just like, because I don't care. Which for me, like, I still think about that to this. Yeah, but you could be owning the wrong thing. Well, I don't know. I will counter the fact. I think you can own wherever you want.

I think you can own whatever you want. I think there's some things that shouldn't be worth owning. I think it's the confident. But like if you do that, then chances are you're probably not going to be able to get a great girl. Like, imagine owning being an in cell. You know, like, I don't. I'm owning it. Like, that's not going to be attractive.

That's a good point. That's a really good point. So I think Coco Chanel said, fashion is whatever you can get away with. And I kind of just like that. Anyways, as one of the most fashionable women of all time, like icons. I feel like she has a good perspective on like what fashion is

and it's just whatever you can get away with. And I like that's a good point. I feel like modern fashion, you look at it and you're like, this person looks like an animal. It doesn't even look like human at that point. Oh, the runway shows. I don't get with the point of these runway shows is at all.

It's actually a money thing. So I only know this because my wife buys lots of expensive things. So those runways. So many of the outfits there are made to look high fashion. And then the people who are in attendance there, it's like a huge honor to be like invited by like Stella McCartney or Coco Chanel or whoever to or Gucci to attend the runway show. Like it's a, like usually you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get invited to one of those shows. And it's usually like on their clothing. Yeah.

It's like 20 people a year get a. invited, hands selected across the whole nation to get invited as like consumers. And then while you're there, they'll parade these people around. And then you're somewhat expected to bid on the actual outfits themselves. Yeah, the outfits are so atrocious. I mean, like, who's ever going to buy that and actually wear that out to like Walmart? You know what? You would never wear these things. You'd be amazed. You'd be amazed. And sometimes it's not the whole outfit. Sometimes it's a piece of it or it's a hat or a blouse or whatever. But like, there'll be like, they'll be like 50,000, 100,000 dollar dresses. But to me it seems like the ugliest clothing that they could get away with. To me it seems like a

experiment. Like how wild... Social experiment. Can we make this? You guys are being filmed? There's a camera there. There's a camera there. I'm waiting for the joke to come like 20 years later. Because I've seen some of these things with like shoes with a goldfish in them. It's stupid. Oh, there's like these necklaces, pendant things with a turtle inside of it. It's so sad. A live turn. Yeah, like a baby turtle. Are you serious? I've seen that before. It's very serious. How is, but it's just, but it's just a weird outfit. Well, for like 24 hours maybe. I mean, think about the life it gets the lead. I mean, the comparison is just like it's just floating around water. all day here, like it gets to travel the world. It gets to like hang out with people. I bet if you ask the turtle, I'd probably say it preferred that too. Right. I saw this video and it was someone who did a social experiment where they created like this new hip store where they got like, I think it was like H&M and like cheap. Yeah. Payless. Yeah. But it's from pay less shoe store. And then all these people came and they started blogging about it and like, oh my God, this is so cute. This

is amazing. But it's all just cheap. Yeah. They bought it was like 500 to $700 shoes. They just only use paleo shoes and had people review them afterwards, the influencers. They're like, by the way. What really goes to show you how important marketing is. If you just brand. Yeah. That's all it is. You have no idea.

Yeah. Like this shirt. How much do you think this shirt is? Very nice. Very nice. Guess how much. Guess how much? I'm guessing this shirt right here, I can tell based off the material alone, $300.

How do you think it is? I haven't felt it. Give it a little touch, man. You could feel it. if you want to. I feel it was like old Lulu. I'm gonna go 60. $60?

No, it's Tom Ford. Oh, is it really? I didn't know you were inexpensive clothing. It's free. It's free. Yeah, I'm not spending the money. Are you sponsored by Tom? No, oh my gosh, no.

That would be amazing. Now, Jason and Brett, Oppenheim, give me their clothing. And they wear... They had the brokerage that he used for. The Oppenheim group. Yeah. So they buy some of the nicest stuff.

Yeah. But, you know, over time it'll shrink. So when it shrinks, It no longer fits them, but it fits me perfectly. So I get all their hammy downs. Yeah. Yeah. Must be.

So I have a whole wardrobe of almost exclusively Tom Ford and Dior. Well, I buy brand new tank tops. I'll just like let the record show. How many times are you wearing before you toss it? Honestly, I don't know. You said that your wife, Layla, has very expensive taste. Does this ever bother you? If she was like, Alex, I want to buy a $50,000 purse.

You'd be like, for Alex, it's pennies. It's like, it's like, you wouldn't care. No, she does that. Like, no, she does whatever she wants. But not a single part of you. I also, she earns her own, like, we do this together. But it's a joint thing, right? Like, exactly.

So. I mean, I spend money on like gym equipment. That's like what I like. That's like the one thing that I spend money on. How much more new equipment? Like, they're not coming out with new machines every month, right? I mean, they do come up with new machines. They do?

Yeah, for sure. Every month is like, it's like a fashion. Is it inside your apartment? No, so we just bought the, uh, the old UFC headquarters. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a, there's a huge chunk of space. Oh.

So we're, yeah. making a massive gym there. So that'll probably cost like, I don't know, 450 grand all in. But like, so it's like how many purses could she have probably a lot,

you know? And so, but like I just buy, you know, my stuff's a little chunker than hers is, but like Lila wanted to have nice things her whole life.

And so we have the ability to do that. So what do I gain by depriving her of that? It's not like it puts us in any kind of different financial situation than we are now. If her spending in any way materially affected our goals, she wouldn't do it. Like she's only done that when it basically

doesn't affect us in any real way. why would I stop her from doing that? Like why have the money to begin with? But have you ever thought of the reason why she wants the expensive things and why she wants to? And I don't think she knows the answer either. Who knows? Yeah. When people ask why, we just guess an answer.

And we answer with things that we've answered in the past that people have given us approval for. So it's like, why are you so motivated, Alex? I could be like, my father never gave me enough approval. Or I could say my mother didn't pay enough attention to me. I could say I had a teacher who encouraged me early on or I spoke once in class and I did a good job and I really wanted to do more of that. Like, I could make up a hundred different reasons. But all we know is that I do these things. And I think just erasing the why and the because,

it just makes the life a lot easier because you don't have to deal with it. So it's like the two things that I've been focused a lot on, it's like elimination of should, which I think I talked a lot about on one of the first podcasts that we did together. And I'd say like my focus right now is kind of elimination of why and because. Because we don't know. You have no idea. Like I don't know.

Like, I think he was, it's like when someone tries to guess your intention. It's like, you don't know. You don't know why I said that. And the real reason, I don't know why I said that. we just know that I said it and just focus on that. And that's just been easier in terms of like communicating with other people, managing relationships, even persuasion. It's like, it's trying to be like, you did this because you don't know, stick to what you can observe. And that's just made my life a lot easier.

It appears like it's a part of human nature to come up with all of these extra details, problems, justifications, et cetera, explanations for certain things. Why is it in our nature to continually do this and complicate things when you, when you explain things? It's just so simple. I have no idea. I know that we do it. I don't know why. That is so unfair.

That is, I mean, it's a perfect answer. Why is it unfair? No, it's a great answer. It's a great answer. It's a great.

It's like, I can make something up if you want, but like it'll just be made up. Yeah. And to be fair, most people will just make up, you know, answers to questions of like,

why. And it's a hard bounce for me because sometimes I'll get on podcast. And like, the more strict I have and kind of to do a certain degree, like what mood I meant, I might answer very much.

answer very much more strictly on that, but it can sometimes make for a more boring podcast experience because people are like, fine, so we don't know anything. And I'm like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's interesting for me to, for you to go from like, Layla wants and has all these nice things to you where you're just like, I'm just going to get down to the basics. Why do I want this? Do I really need it? No. It seems like Layla's very much an opposite in that. She'll just say, I want it. I don't need to think about why I want it and what this means. I just want it. I'm not going to put any more effort into that. There was a boat, big yacht that had a name on it that I really liked and it was don't analyze your pleasures and she knows that she likes it and I like that

she likes it and like what is wrong with that like the only reason that someone would have any objection to that is simply because of the price tag associated with it if she liked buying one dollar clothes no one would have any issue with it it's just because it's expensive but that's based on their understanding of expensive not necessarily my context and even if it was even if I had me the exact amount of money as whoever would be judging me for judging Layla for buying clothing like that why do you care how I spend my money yeah spend yours your way. Because basically them expressing that is expressing their preference that I would live,

they would prefer that I live the way they live their lives. Sure. But like, why don't you just keep living your life the way you prefer? And I'll keep living my life the way I prefer. I don't prefer that you live your wife a different, live your life. Yeah.

Yeah. Do whatever you want. Okay. Yeah. If there's like, that's my like no should, elimination of should, elimination of wine because.

That would be my, you know, presidential campaign. No shoulds. No wise and no because is. Do you think if you were president that you could do a better job or you could do a great job. No, I think I would do a horrible job. You think so? I don't know. I heard this question. I heard this question online and everyone's like saying, oh, you should ask

people this question to see what they say. I don't know. I have no aspirations or desires. I have actually had a conversation this morning about that. This one's like, man, if you like could talk about politics, you would go so much wider. I don't have interest. Like, I've never been interested in politics. I don't follow the news. I like, again, the only thing that I consume is something as it relates to how we make money and how we, run our businesses. That is the only thing that I like I'll consume anything tangentially to that and that's it. Like if I was in healthcare, I'd probably be looking more about like what, you know, if I was like getting into like HRT like hormone replacement therapy as an industry if I want to

get into, then I'd be looking at legislation that's pending that might make some of our, you know, reclassify some of the drugs that we might be selling or something like that. Like I would be, that would be something I'd be interested. But it wasn't because of the politics. I would just be interested because of the economics. So one, I don't have interest. Second is that I'm not very knowledgeable about it. And those kind of go hand in hand. But like if I were to be someone to ask me a political question. I don't have any skill and interest. Yeah, I have, I have no knowledge on that. And if I made a point, people probably have an excellent counterpoint. And they'd be like, what do you think about that? I'd be like, you're probably right. I don't spend time on this.

I feel like I would be making an ignorant, I'd be giving ignorant advice. And if I were to do anything, it would just be like from first principles. And I'm sure there's many things that get in the way of that from like a legislative perspective and whatnot. And so I focus on the things that I am good at and that I enjoy. Is there anything you're unhappy about? I would say I have the same, the same complaints that any entrepreneur would, which is like, I always want things to happen faster. But like, I also realize that and, and try to adjust my expectations appropriately and talk to Solomon, be like, what did you expect? If I were to give me advice, I'd be like, you're doing, you know, you're doing fine. And you're, it's taking, it's actually happening faster than you

originally thought was what happened. So like, are you really just readjusting your expectations so that you can be dissatisfied? Well, that sounds silly. I like my life. It's weird. I mean, like, it's odd nowadays to just be like, I like my life. I've spent a lot of effort to create an environment with people that I enjoy doing things that I enjoy. Are there things day to day that come up that are stressors? Of course. Like that's, you know, any business, anything you do has overhead. But I like what I do every day. And I think I'm pretty good at it. And that brings me a lot of enjoyment. When you wake up, you'd say the off the rip emotion that you feel is tired. How much sleep do you get? Oh, I mean, if I get eight, I can like cure cancer. So like I'm, you know,

I try to, like, I got two eight hours sleeps in a row this last week. And I was like, I could literally repaint the Mona Lisa right now. Like, I felt so good. What occupies that time that would inhibit you to get eight hours? Nothing inhibits me from getting eight hours. I just wake up earlier. That's more, that's like more often what happened. Oh, really?

Yeah, I haven't put an alarm. Yeah, I haven't put an alarm on in. How do you do that? Forever. Upon first wake up, do you get up or do you sometimes think? No, I try. If I can, if I can go back to sleep, I well. But I mean, there's a lot of things I want to do.

And so, like, I get excited. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I'll be physically tired, but like I'm excited mentally. Like my brain will turn on and I'm like, ooh, there's all these things I want to do. I mean, there was a time when I, I had one of those rings that, like, did your sleep stuff. Or a ring. I got more annoyed about the ring.

Why? Because I, maybe an indication of how much I've changed over time. I was 22 the last time I did that. So I was 12 years ago. But I got so competitive with myself to try and, like, beat my last night's PR that I would, like, stress about trying. Like, I would, like, not move so that it wouldn't, like, wake the ring up to think that I was sleeping. You know what I mean? And then I was like, I'm sleeping worse now that I have this ring on.

So I was like, if anything, I would wake up the next day and it would give me a reason why, like, the day would be, like, it would tell me if I was going to have a good or bad day. And I was like, well, that's silly. Because I've had plenty of days that have been very little sleep and great days. And I've had days right. You know what? Because I have the aura ring and I use it a lot. And I do say that when I see in the morning that says, like, you did not get a good night of rest. Yeah.

Yeah. It does kind of put me in a mood. Like, oh, crap. Yeah, yeah. It's telling me I got to be careful. I wouldn't have even thought about that. had it not been now planted in my mind, that maybe I'm going to be a little slower today.

Well, that's like the superstition stuff that I've talked about, where it's like, Dr. Cash, you good buddy in mind. He says he defines a scam as something that if you remove it, your function gets worse. And so it's like, basically we create these crutches. So it's like, oh, man, if I don't have my greens juice in the morning, like I feel terrible. But then after a while, you start to be able to only take the green juice

just to feel normal. Well, then if I take the green juice away, then I feel bad. Well, then that's a scam. Like, that doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't work. And so I just, I'm super cautious. And to like to your point about like creating the very earlier, it's like, I just really try not to be superstitious about anything because I want,

I want to have as many of the controllables under more control as I can. And if I, like, I love the idea of competing at somebody who has a million crutches. It's like you just knock one of them out. They're screwed. Like, like, if my competitor, like, oh, if I don't have eight hours of sleep, I'm a bear. It's like, well, I can't wait for you to have one bad night's sleep. And then I'll just win that day because I don't mind having a short night sleep and still working. like I work fine. So anyways, all that to say, sometimes I sleep shorter and sometimes I sleep

longer. I sleep as long as I can't. With Layla. I know we kind of like alluded to this in like previous conversations. A lot about Layla. But I guess always about Layla. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You got an interest to you. She's interesting. Okay. You guys live, I'm sure, incredibly challenging, incredibly busy lives and maintaining a relationship. I know we've talked about before, but maintaining a relationship in that environment can be incredibly challenging. And you said last time that you have an algorithm. Like you have logic that determines the success of your relationship with Layla. And if something isn't fitting, then you need to change the inputs.

Sure. I'm wondering, has it continued to serve you to see it as an algorithm? Because I like to think that love is this thing, that it's more of like a nondescript thing. That kind of just like occurs between two people. And it's not so like algorithmic and equational. You know what I mean? Well, I think just for the audience sake, it's not like I have this Excel sheet at home of like, okay, three hugs equals, you know, like a kiss or, you know what I mean? I don't have like.

Yeah, one Chanel bag. Yeah, one Chanel bag equals two good days, you know, whatever, you know, well, I would say this, which is that if you feel like it is that ephemeral thing that's so hard to capture and so hard to describe, like, I'd be like, good luck finding it. And honestly, I think the big difficulty with love and marriages in general is that everything's N equals one. So even like, like, like my relationship with Layla is unique in that I am one of one and she's one of one. I've seen, and you probably have two, I've seen like 60 year marriages, you know, people in their 90s, very different dynamics with all of them. And like, you guys have a unique partnership for this podcast. And everybody else has unique dynamics for their partnership. And we know what has worked for them. I share what has worked for me. If some of those things

help other people awesome, if they don't, then ignore them. You know, both of us tend to be very agreement oriented, meaning neither of us like to be controlled. Both of us have a lot of agency, like we like to make our own decisions and kind of operate freely. And so like, how do you get two people together that are really strongly independent? We make agreements. And like these are like, I agree to these things. You agree to these things. And like, as long as that works for us, then we don't change the agreement. It's worked great. And if we, if something comes up, then it's like, hey, let's revisit this. And if it makes sense, then we revisit it. And that has worked really well because we have exceedingly clear expectations of one another in terms of like what we're going

to do and what we're not going to do. And that has worked really well. And there's always resolve between these disagreements. Yeah. Eventually. I mean, pretty quickly usually, yeah. We don't argue much. Do you have some other like silver lining that kind of, not silver lining,

but like other thing that arbitrates these disagreements between you and her, maybe some fundamental agreements that you made right in the beginning that you can then use as rules to decide current disagreements? Well, I think fundamentally, Layla and I also both believe that love is conditional, not unconditional.

And so even, the idea of marriage for us has been based on agreements, which is like, if there were a time in the future where Layla no longer wanted to do the things that I want to do, then I would not hold her to her commitment to be with me because it was contingent on that we want these same things. And so it's like similar mission, similar values, similar interests. If you want to go to the same place and gather the same way, values and what you spend your time on in between interests is aligned, then you'll probably be okay. And I think the problem is that a lot of people this is my, you know, one man's two cents, is a lot of people look for, are actively looking

for hookups and then thinking hookups will turn into life partners and wives and spouses. But if you were to look for a hookup, you would look for a very different thing than you would for a spouse. And so expecting one to become the other, I don't know if that's the best, the best frame. This has worked for us because we are that way. Now, there are people that I know who have amazing relationships where one is completely subservent to the other. And that works for them. I really enjoy our relationship because I get tremendous utility from Layla. She serves me in a lot of ways more than I would say most men get from their spouses, at least businessmen, you know what I mean, who are like, it's very, it's not common at all for a wife to be even close to Layla's level. I mean,

sometimes they're like, oh yeah, she's like the secretary in the business and sometimes they overtitle the person to make her feel better or whatever. But like, that's, I would say, more of the norm, if at all in the business. Like Layla absolutely runs the business. She's CEO, period. I'm like off to the side and I like think of good things every once in a while. Like she's the one who runs everything and like only the people inside of our company can actually like appreciate that. And I will still always get the credit because I am who I am and I look the way I look and I talk the way I talk. But like she's really the one that does it. And so I get a ton out of that and that this is how it has worked for us.

Like Layla and every other relationship in her life was always the dominant one. Like because most guys will fold to Layla. She's incredibly strong world. And like it's I mean it's my belief at least if you if you enjoyed a. male-female dynamic. You just need it. Like if you were a strong woman, you've seen a more strong man. What sort of personal contentions do you have between the two of you? Because it seems like everything is really just business-oriented. Yeah, I mean, we talk about business all day. That's what we do. Yeah. I would say that the busier we are with business, the more we will try and carve out time to

not be business. If things are more like normal pace, we don't really need to carve the time out. The time kind of happens on its own. And so I've seen, you know, clips and stuff where people say, like, you have to have a date night once a week and you can't talk about business. And People are just like throwing these rules out. I just hate all of that. If we feel like we need to like reconnect because it's like we're a little bit too distant in terms of like, hey, I feel like I haven't seen you in a week. Then like, let's go dinner. Let's take some time and let's just hang out and catch up.

I mean, sometimes the Eclops. I feel like I've been with you all day. Like I'm going to get some space. Go to the gym. Hang out. You know, get some food with some guys and like I'll be back. And so I think we just manage that. And I think, um, especially in like of the world of remote work, I actually think that, in my opinion, people spend too much time together.

I think this is Esther Perel, but I think you need to create space to be. missed. There's no time where like I'm more excited to see Layla than a time than I haven't seen her. Motivation is the equal opposite of deprivation. If I haven't seen her one, I'm deprived of Lela. I'm more motivated to see her. I've seen her a ton than I'm probably less motivated to see her. So you think a lot of times in relationships people could be spending too much time together. Absolutely. Nowadays for sure, they live in the same house. They literally spend all day together. I don't think that's at least normal from how we kind of came. I think you need two experiences to come together and then you can do you have something to talk about

because otherwise, if you've had the same experiences all day for weeks, it's like, what do you talk about? I was there at a certain point. How was your day? I don't know. I was there. Like, yeah, we have nothing else to say. So, like, I think when we figured this out for our relationship, it was still like two or three

years in. We actively just like created a ton of space. We worked on opposite sides of the house. We didn't attend. I came off the meetings that she was on. And so like at the end of the day, I was like, oh, oh, you met with John today. How was that? And she said, oh, and you met with that vendor who's doing this thing.

She's like, yeah, and this is what we negotiated. What do you think about this? And then I go through my calendar. And like literally we still to this day do that. Is that at the end of the day, we go for a walk, 45 minutes. I take out my phone. She takes her phone. We go through our calendars.

And we just literally download. Like how was your day? How is my day? Like what are the things that we're working on and moving forward? And that's how we kind of like re-sync up. And then after that we just, we're kind of husband and wife the rest of the day. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't

sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys that you help me spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I asked you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me.

And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. What was the logic behind buying that UFC building? That's dope. It's a lot of space. But they go from someone who's kind of working from home. remotely to getting a full-on office space. It's massive. Yeah.

How many square feet was that? It was like 12,000 square feet or something? It's three floors of 12. It's 36,000 square feet. It's 12, 12, 12, yeah. It's part of the grand plan when I'm investing in. So we're investing heavily in media. And so that's going to have a ton of studios inside of it that we're actively building

out right now, a ton of different sets for different types of content that we want to be putting out with higher quality and higher frequency in the future. That's what I'm building towards. And so having a place where all of my team could sync up and I could attract talent to come here to Vegas as is kind of what we were, what we were shooting for. So what's the grand plan with content?

Are you trying to like take people under the Hormosey brand? No, I actually, I'm actually going to do more me personally. Okay. And Lela. And just, it's more that we're going to, we're going to be facilitating more types of content

rather than more talking ads. Because as much as like my quote, brand has grown. That's actually still been the results of like a half day, a week, or every other week of actual filming. And the rest of it is just the awesome team that we have that has had a cut distributed repurpose content across different platforms. But I actually want to increase inputs into the machine. And in order to do that, I thought it would make sense to have to make this type of investment. Yeah, but 36,000 square feet. Yeah. Well, I want a massive gym. I want a massive gym. So that's like floor one, basically. A whole floor, 12,000 square feet a gym, that makes no sense.

12,000 square feet? It's a big commercial gym. Well, half of it's half of the bottom, the bottom floor, half is parking. But there's no, but there's, there's a commercial half of the, yeah, 100%. Yeah, but still 6,000 square feet. Yeah. Jim. Yeah.

There's no way there's enough machines. I barely can fit anything in there. How? I like equipment. I'm a connoisseur. I have, I'm an officinado of gym equipment. But I feel like you could probably get 99% of the same result. Sure.

With 2,000 square feet in gym. This isn't, this isn't a utility question. This is all. all what Alex wants. This is my purse is in my in my Coco Chanel. Like she could have a plastic bag and carry her shit. But like she wants a Chanel purse. I could just have one shoulder press. But there's three different brands that make different ones that I like for different reasons. There is one question I have. There's a space in that building, I think, where there's one of those roll up things that goes into a space. What's your purpose with that? That's just parking room.

That's the bottom floor's half is, is, is, I thought there's, but there's one where it's kind of like a bit of a It looks like a bit of a warehouse. Yeah, there's the roll up door. That's the whole, that's the bottom floor. Yeah, there's the roll up and then you've got all the parking. And then, I mean, it has all the pillars. And what would it take for the iced coffee hour to be able to, you know, get an office space in there. Got to take it up with Layla.

Layla said that she would probably said she would do it for free. That's what she said. Just shut it. Don't ask. Don't ask. Yeah. But she said as long as you say it's okay. Yeah.

We've already prepared it. No, I'm, I'm stoked about it. But to answer to the question, I don't want to spoil anything. But we have a bunch of new shows. that we're going to be putting out, new types of content, new characters that were going to be bringing in to the content, like a lot of really cool stuff. Like, I was super inspired when I went out to Steve Dave Ramsey and his whole setup. Really? Yeah. Yeah, but what was it like for meeting Dave Ramsey? It was exactly the same. You know what I mean, it's as I expected him to be. I mean, my whole interview, I don't know if you saw it was, uh, was all about business. Yeah. Like I just want to, like, he doesn't, he always talks about personal finances and savings. He kind of has just like his buzz, his buzz things. And I wanted to like try and avoid those to get to like how, how does Ramsey solutions work. and kind of like what were some of the strategic decisions that he made that led him to there. The thing that I find really interesting is that he has somehow managed

to have an education and information business without being seen as a scam. And I find like thinking about anybody else who sells a course coaching events and an app. That's like the prototypical every other coach, whatever guru out there. And somehow he managed to do that and build a $300 million a year business

from basically the same ingredients. And I was like, I wanted to really get close to like what made it different for Dave versus everybody else. And so I think there's two main things. This is my two cents. So Dave, if you ever see this, this is my thoughts. One is that the promise that he was making was something that is absolutely believable, no one could fight, which is that if you spend less money, you will have more leftover.

It's very different than most other promises, which is our make money, which is like if you do this thing, then you make $2,000 a month or whatever it is. It's like, if you make $5,000 and you save $1,000, you have $1,000 left over. Yeah, yeah. There's just no one can fight you, right? And I think that really protects him from a promises perspective. Yeah. The other side is that he absolutely focuses on brand above everything and his reputation.

And so like an indication of that is that he does the biggest slice of revenue that he has is media. Like everybody else just like right hooks the shit out of their audience at all times. And so like they couldn't even sell media places, media spots on their own if they wanted to because they have like no goodwill in their audience. But he still deposit. it so much more goodwill, provides so much more value at scale that he's able to make, you know, 10 million a month just on media alone. He shared that on the podcast. I don't mind sharing it. Those are the two big ones. And then the third kind of bonus takeaway that I had was, they run a lot more events than I thought they did, which I thought was pretty interesting. They were

an event every week. I was like, I think that's, isn't that a newer thing for them? I don't know. They have a new venue, but they're doing one of a week. I thought that was interesting. And then the second thing, you know, bonus B2 is, was the amount of volume that he was putting in. And that was part of what inspired me to basically do more. was I figured that he would spend the majority of his time running Ramsey Solutions and then make, you know, do his show and then and whatnot. But when you look at actual hours, he spends like 20 hours a week making content. And I also found that with PBD.

He also did 20 hours a week and some of these other brands that produce a lot of content. And when I look at my hours significantly less than that, we spend way more on the portfolio side. And so the building was somewhat of a commitment and investment towards building towards that. I think what I'm getting from this, is that you were inspired by Dave Ramsey. Yeah.

You bought this building and you can turn your version of business, your Dave Ramsey approach to what you're doing. Yeah. That'll be an element of it for sure. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, I mean. I wish you could tell us more about it.

Model, yeah, I mean, you'll see it. But a model success, you know what I mean? I think that we will do it a little bit differently because we're, you know, we're us. We talk about business. We have different subject matters and whatnot. But I think it's funny because I've been a remote only business since, I mean, basically my, almost my entire career.

And so, I mean, I had my in-person gyms, but even those I ran from home because I didn't drive out to all the locations every day. And so it's really cool having the in-person now and like seeing people at the office every day. And I think the amount that we can influence and teach and upskill the team in an in-person environment is so much faster than in a remote environment. And the ability to influence culture at scale is so much faster in-person environment. So I'm actually just very excited for our speed of execution that we're probably going to be able to unlock. When is the gym going to be complete? Probably a month. Well, I'll say it's stages.

So the entire gym will be done probably in a month, and it'll have the first wave of equipment. I'll have equipment orders coming in for the next year after that. Wow. I really want to go there and work out. Oh, it'll be the best gym in Vegas. And no one will be able to go.

No one can go. But Jack and I. It's not going to be like a public gym. I'm not going to like have. It's a private gym. It's like someone's out. Yeah, it's my office. I'm not like having.

But Jack and I. A little bit of room for a couple of folks. Jack and I could go, right? I mean, we get an invite. You just take it up with Layla. I'm sure she'll be right. She said yes.

She said yes. Are you going to put a ping pong table in there? We already have one. Got it. We game. We ball. Are you living from the office? I feel like I wouldn't leave.

Like for you to be that efficient, I would live there. Not as much as you think, actually. So to be fair, we're still like building out some of the stuff and some stuff's like half done. And so it's easier for me to do some things at home. But one of the things that we wanted to be really particular about was we wanted

to create an incredibly rewarding environment. That would encourage people to come, you know, as often as possible, but not have like rules as in you don't have to show up at nine you don't have to stay till five like you don't have to come certain days of the week because we've been a remote company but the idea was that we would want to create an environment that people wouldn't want to stay home from and so that's kind of what we're shooting for yeah when i saw well jack and i saw mr beast he turned one of his offices into a bedroom and it was incredible yeah and it made me kind of

think if i were in that position yeah i would not mind living if i were single i would absolutely If I were single, I would absolutely be the office. Yeah, but I bet. But it's big enough where you and Layla could have 3,000 square feet in this place. A ton. And you would never even know. Well, there's already a suite.

There's two suites that have full. Actually, there's three suites that have bathrooms and fool everything. And the previous owner was international. And so he would come and he would sleep here or sleep at the building. And then he would fly back. I think he was like Asian. She wouldn't go for it? Not even close.

Like not a chance. Not a chance on Earth. I mean, that just seems like so much fun because like the gym is down there. You also just never leave. And I think there's like it's almost creating space to be missed from work too. It's like it's nice to have somewhere to go. And I will say with the office thing, Jason, you can back me up here. It's such a different vibe going home.

When you work from home all the time, it's like home and work are just basically all the time. But working somewhere separate from where you live, when you get back, home feels a little bit more relaxing, which is kind of nice. Sure. Yeah. So you prefer at this point having an office? Yeah, I do. I'm super pro office right now.

I really like it. That's something I've not had in a very long time. I used to go into the Oppenheim group. Almost every day, pretty much. I'd be there. Even when I was mostly doing YouTube full time, I'd still go into the office. Just because I liked it.

I enjoyed just getting out of the house, going somewhere. It's exactly that. It's literally that. Got me in the zone of working because it's like, oh, everyone else is here. I put all my headphones and it's up on. It's exactly that.

It's exactly that. And I know I'll work out harder when the team's there around me. Like, I'm like, I now I'm going to be able to, like, be able to record content while I'm working out, which I don't really do because at public gyms. It's weird.

I already get enough people stopping me. I mean, it's like they don't want to draw more attention. But like, I'll be able to do that at the gym there. And that'll be awesome. So like now I'm actually having another rewarding like stimulus from working out. So it's like I get to work out. And then I also get to make content. So it's like I've even more reason to work out.

So it's just giving more ways to win, which I like. I think you'd make a great series if for your content, what you would do like, you know, how Dave Ramsey has people on take note of this. You work out with somebody else in kind of like a podcast setting. So you mic them up and you do workouts. Yeah, you're planning on doing this. Oh, yeah. Okay. Perfect.

Yeah. I agree. I think that would be very cool. Part of the plan. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, I'll announce the name.

It's going to be called between sets. Between sets. Fantastic name. Wow. I like that. Yeah. That's good. Does you come up with that?

You did. Yeah, because a lot of my life lessons actually happen between sets. And so it's like, I'd be lifting with an older guy and we'd be between sets and he'd be like, you know, Bob, or I'd ask him a question. He's like,

yeah, this is kind of how I see it. And I always like that environment, too. Because like, at least my, obviously my experience in the gym has been so overwhelmingly positive throughout my entire life. I've had so many mentors, so many friends, so many life lessons learned in the gym between sets. I want to kind of like take the audience along for that kind of same experience that I

mean, I grew up basically. I mean, I've spent so much in my life from gym, you know, literally like from teenage years in high school to literally what my career was for the first five years, my professional career after my job was literally being in a gym all day. So I have just so many positive experiences there. And just also as a weird side note,

this is from a creator perspective. I think like of my top like 20 clips of all time, six of them are me at the gym. And I've only recorded at the gym twice ever. So it's just kind of interesting. I was like it, I don't know if it's like a juxtaposition of like dude, but not talking about fitness stuff. Because I'm not, I'm basically, you know what the thing is gym content is doing really, really, really, really well right now. And so it's, it's a bit, it's on an up trend. But the other thing I've noticed is that when you're talking, people lose retention. If you're just static. But if you're there doing something, it's like listening to

you with subway surfers on the bottom, except you could incorporate. you lifting weights and speaking. There's just two things going on. I could watch you lift the weight and I could listen at the same time. So I think it's really dynamic. I think that's really important. You would know.

Yeah, so we're super stoked about that. And also all my, so all my tweets, the vast majority of them coming to me while I'm working out. So it's like I'll be between sets and I'll just be firing off tweets. And that's, and so this time I'll just be doing that to a camera. The one request I have, meet with Sam Selleck.

Yeah, do something with him as soon as possible. I would love. If he could be the first person you have there. Well, we're going to have one that's not him first. But who's the first? So when Chris Williamson and I did our podcast, we actually worked out together. And so we had a really great exchange while we worked out. And so the team compressed that into the, which will be the first episode of Between Suts.

How long is that going to be? Actually, you know. How long is the episode? 13, 14 minutes. Yeah, we're not doing, we're not doing. We'll see. We'll experiment with it. I'm going to tell you, what will be the best if you make this an hour long workout and you include the entire thing?

Yeah. The entire hour, with, by the way, no edits. If you could do one straight shot, post it to YouTube, no edits. Including like the you getting up, like you're kind of out of breath. People are loving that. That's why Sam is doing so well. It's just no edits. It's just real.

And that's what I think is lacking right now on YouTube. Yeah. No, I mean, we'll, we're down for anything. Yeah. You know, whatever serves the audience, we're happy to, you know, provided it works with our values. We're down to, don't know. What's your hair care routine? Oh God.

Nothing. Do you use shampoo? No. What? What do you mean you don't use shampoo? Mm-hmm. Why? My hair gets like super fluffy, so I just don't.

Do you just use water? What about conditioner? I don't. Ever? No shampoo ever. Right. Graham, I did this for like eight months. Yeah, but I feel like your hair just way down.

No, you scrub. I mean, you still scrub your scalp. You still like... The thing is you strip yourself of the natural oils when you do you shampoo. This is the theory. And then you overproduce the theory. And then you overproduce the... these oils, which then makes your hair really oily and creates dandruff. But if you get past

like the lump of like, no shampoo, then ends up being healthy. I don't know. I mean, I've been doing this for years. I've been doing this for years. And it's also good because apparently when you're like really scrubbing on your scalp, it facilitates hair growth as well. It's what they say. You're stimulating. It's been working for me. You know, what about your beard? Do you use any product there? Actually, I started using basically like a, it's like chapstick for your beard. But it's just if I, if I comb it out in the morning, it just stays a little straighter. Otherwise, it's just like, fuck it's like a mangled monster and do you do that do you keep this look because it's for branding or do you do it like for any other reason it's so funny i got there was like a mastermind or something like a

group of people who were all so a buddy mine was there and he was like somebody got up and was like so this is hermosy's strategy to blah blah blah and i always find it funny when people break down my strategies when there wasn't one but i was wearing i literally am wearing the outfit that i can wear in the most environments comfortably so like i can wear this to the pool i can wear this to the gym i can with us this podcast. I can go out to dinner because I just throw a flannel on top of it. I'm good to go. And also we're in Vegas and so it's hot a lot. And so I wear like the lightest thing that I can wear with. But that beard is more maintenance to keep it like that. I'm guessing than it. No. Trimming and shaving is way more than this. I literally just exist. And then I come in

the morning five seconds on one on Zoom. Jason will buy off you on Zoom. Yeah, but you have to trim it every now and then, right? No, if somebody comes. You sculpt it and everything comes? Yeah. Yeah. Why can't you just do it yourself? I let them do it. I mean, I just sit down. He comes. I can take a call.

I can do whatever I won. He's just cutting it while in there. How much is that? I don't know. People have been saying it could be a weak chin. A weak chin. He's actually hiding. He's hiding a no chin.

Yeah, you're right. He's what they're saying. You're right. That's it. That's what it is. That's what it is. Yeah. It's weak chin.

Okay. I have a question about the Nicorette. Sure. Have you found, because I've heard, I actually heard this from Tucker Carlson on Theo Vaughn, which is amazing. If you guys haven't seen it, you guys should watch it after this episode,

that this Nicorette stuff, like nicotine in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's this stuff, all of the auxiliary things that happens when you ingest nicotine, usually, which is like the smoke that hurts your lungs or your gums and et cetera. But nicotine actually increases mental acuity.

It makes you more energetic, it motivates you, et cetera. Have you noticed the same thing with this Nicorette? I mean, I mean, I've been chewing to a crad for like 14 years. Wait, really? I didn't know this. Why? Why do you start doing that?

Well, I mean, I like nicotine in general. How did you get started on that? I started chewing nicotine. You started chewing it or you started smoking? I started chewing. Nicotine. You went straight to chewing. How do you decide one day I'm going to start chewing?

I liked dipping. And then I was like, well, dipping is bad for you. So then I just like started chewing niccrette. Got the same benefits and been doing it since. So what are the benefits that you get? it's a I mean it's a short acting stimulant so it's a 30 minute half life so like you can chew this at 5 o'clock in the afternoon because you want to have like a boost from 5 to 7 or something now 30 minutes so it's like it'll half multiple times in that time period but you can go to sleep fine and so um it's one it's an appetite suppressant so if you are trying to like maintain calories or anything like anything like that like if you are hungry and you're like I shoot a minute it's I got to take a call at 12 and I'm hungry now I got to wait till one it's like you can pop into credit and it's just very easy it is stimulate from a energy like perspective it also increases short-term memory, which is nice. And I have a history of Alzheimer's in my family, and it's been shown to decrease the likelihood of Alzheimer's because it promotes angiogenesis,

which is just basically increasing blood flow on the brain. And what are the negatives of doing that? I haven't found any. I see nicotine a lot like caffeine. Like it's just, it would just be like, if for some reason we magically found that coffee had like cancer causing stuff in it, but caffeine itself was fine. Yeah. It's like, okay, well, don't drink coffee, but you can still like, drink Mountain Dew or you can just take caffeine pills. Exactly. I see nicotine the same way. And I also haven't found myself addicted to it. Like I forget to chew it. I like it. I want to talk about like associating things from a behavior perspective. Like I chew nicotine when I work. And so I have associated work with nicotine. And so it's like if you want to get

addicted to work, then put an addictive agent close to the thing that you actually want to do. But if I don't work, I forget to chew it. Why aren't smokers just chewing Nicorette gum all the time? Because smoking is addicting. It's the oral fixation. Smoking is addicting. I guess this is the first I've ever heard if someone is chewing the gum. Yeah, smoking is a different, like nicotine in it of itself and I'm not even going to get in the science pros in the comments, but like I have no draw, I forget to take it.

It might say take, I mean, chew it. I forget to chew it. So I have not found it to be addictive per the science people that I know into and of itself is not addictive. It is the other things like chewing tobacco, like the active dipping, things like that are addictive. Smoking is addictive, vaping itself is like the action.

those were addictive because of the nicotine, not because of the way they're consumed. You're saying you could have decaf coffee and it would satisfy your coffee addiction in the same way, essentially, assuming caffeine and nicotine. Well, it would be like me smoking a cigarette that doesn't have caffeine if that was the analogy.

Right. So I don't understand. Well, no, no, no. Like you're saying it's not necessarily the nicotine because you say you forget to take it. Yeah. But for the people that are addicted to smoking cigarettes, it's the oral fixation.

The things are paired. I think it's together. God. I think it's both the things together. And also like, there's also many, because like also when do people smoke and like this is getting like i want to be very clear this is beyond my you know my scope but people pair things that are positive with smoking so it's like you go outside you get some time like you're working you associate it with a break and then you

light up so it's like there's all of the other things that get associated with together and that's what gets harder to to quit got it that makes sense but i enjoy it if you are when somebody start into the nicotine world just don't take too much try to get layla a dick to it and no one gets addicted to doesn't matter. But she chewed too much. And she was like, this isn't for me. I was like, well, that's like drinking a whole bottle of vodka and saying like alcohol is in for me. I was like, take a shot. See how you feel. And I think the same thing with nicotine is like, like, chew a half a milligram and just see how you feel and go from there. I mean, I chew a ton, but I just like it. So whatever. I do believe that we probably have to put some

sort of disclaimer here. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. The ice coffee hour people, we're not knowledgeable on this subject. Oh, neither. Intuitively, I would say don't do it. But you do have somebody that says it has positively affected their life. Don't do it. In the same way that Tucker Carlson said that it has positively affected his life.

Yeah. But I don't know. I've just heard bad things. That's what they taught me in school. And my official stance is don't do it and it doesn't affect me what you do. So like, and what I do doesn't affect you.

It's fine. I have accepted whatever risks. Yeah. Come with it. I enjoy it. And if I die five years younger, it's okay. All right.

Fair enough. That's so fascinating. The laugh at the end. Why do you need to live a long? time anyways. Well, because... Compared to a thousand years, assuming this is our only life, our only opportunity at anything, right? Then wouldn't you want to extend it? Not necessarily. I think there's a difference in health span and work span and lifespan and lifespan. Like some people like add years to their life, but they don't add life

to their years. That's great. I like that a lot. That's a fantastic quote. You've tweeted that, I'm guessing? No. I'm sure someone has said. You should. That's a great tweet right there. Do you have any other tricks like the Solomon chats that you employ to be better off? Sure. I have a lot of frames on dealing with stress and missed expectations. Because I think if you're in business or really just in life in general, you're bound to have expectations that are not met. And so I just have a number of, to your word, tricks that I've used.

So like one of them is one that I call the frame of the veteran, which I got from Dr. Cashy, which is basically like something bad happens. And then you imagine that it happens a thousand times. in a row after that. And then you think, okay, well, how would I feel on the thousandth time of this happening? And usually on the thousandth time, you would have already habituated to it and just be a part or a fact of life. It's like, well, if that's how I can feel about it then, then I might as well feel about it that way now. And so I actually, the first time I ever used it, I had, I just bought this,

this just sounds so hokey. I got this final shirt that I really liked. It was like a color scheme. It was cool. And the maid that I had shrunk it. And I was like, super annoyed. And I thought to myself. I was like, well, if everything that she ever did trunk and every time I wash something it shrunk, then I wouldn't be upset about it because it just would be how clothes work in the dryer. So if that's how it always was, then I wouldn't be upset about it. So if I can choose it not be upset about it then I won't be upset about it now and then it was over. And so it's like having frameworks like that that have served me really well. Like the reason I had the time one, when we just talked about like lifespan is like when my cat Bill died, I was super bummed

because I really liked the cat and he died at like 18 months. So it was kind of like weird. It was like a freak odd death. And I remember being sad about it. I was like, why am I sad? Like what, like, why am I sad? And I was like, I feel like it's not fair that he lives such a short life. I was like, okay. So that means that I had an expectation that he would live longer than he did.

I was like, what if cats only lived six months? And I got to hang out with Bill for 18 months. Well, then I'd be like, well, shit, I mean, he lived a good long life. I mean, I got him three times longer than most people get the cats. And so then all of a sudden, like my status was like, it shifted to like more of an appreciation for the time that I had with him. And so it was it was simply just shifting my expectation around what I expected are I demanded of the universe that my cat should live longer, but like, but why? And then I think about that within the context of like our

lives because if all humans live to 20, if we like at 34, I'm like, dude, I'm murdering it. But like within the context of like all time, we all don't live long at all. And so if I got to live the way that I wanted to live for the extent of my life, it's only the expectation that I would deserve to or demand that I live longer and have that unmet, which is the thing that would cause me to be more upset. But if I make life choices that cause me to live till 75 versus 85, the lifespan is still the lifespan and the only thing I lose is the present. So all of these things, what I like about it, is that it's just a change in perspective. It's not a change in what is. It's just a different framework of how you see it. And that makes, that makes all the

difference. One of the other frames I use is, uh, it's just zooming all the way out, which is one of my favorites, which is just, you have this instance that bothers you, whatever happened, right? I lose $15 million and be really upset about it. And then I just like zoom all the way out. And I'm like, you know, far enough out, you can't even see the earth. And I just like remind myself of that. And then I'm like, okay, this just doesn't matter. And then I zoom back in again. And so I usually play with time and space in terms of trying to reframe whatever the issue is that I'm upset about and think like, what is the expectation that I have and how is it unmet? And how can I shift that expectation and what if the expectation were completely different. What if every time I drove,

there was always 20 minutes of traffic? Would I still be upset? Probably not because it would be just like how it always is. And so like using those things on a regular basis, I think have allowed me to make better decisions and be a little bit less emotional or reactive to bad news. And I think if you compound that like small amount of space that you can create for yourself for an extended period of time, you can make better decisions. And so that's probably been to answer your question, like some of the tricks that have been really useful for me. I'm wondering, because you spend a lot of your time working and it seems like you have this routine every single day is somewhat similar. Are you concerned that you're spending some period of time in your life that a lot of

people would deem like the golden years doing the same thing over and over again rather than like openness to experience and maybe trying traveling or trying and going this doing this new hobby like this ping pong thing, right? Doing a new thing and experiencing it and then what if it's like 10 times better than whatever you had? What if you allocated a certain percentage of your time on a weekly basis to try out something new? Well one I wouldn't know if there was something that was better. And so that doesn't bother me very much. Like there could be some, I'm sure there's something that could be hypothetically better, but I also would hedonistically adapt to it anyways and probably return right back to my baseline.

I mean, there are people who live in Africa who never leave the tribe and are happier than we are. And so like I don't think finding out more things is the, is like the path. But for me to somebody who would criticize my quote way of living, I do exactly what I want with as much a highest percentage of my day as I humanly can with the people that I want to do it with. So like I get criticized from family still to a degree that I quote, work too much. But that's because like their projection of what work means to them is just so negative. And if I said all I do is play video games all day, then they would say that I'm not working enough. But what if my job was to play video games all day?

Then I'd be working too much. It's just like it's simply just their projections of how they would prefer I live my life. Their statement is I would prefer you live your life the way I want you to live your life, to which I say no. So I live my life the way I want to live it. And that is enough. Cool. I love it. Okay.

Thank you, man. Fantastic. Thank you guys. That was great. We're so happy to have you on. I want like, I mean, if it's not too much to ask, every year, you know. The recurring guess. Because look it, we have developments.

Like last time. It was shoulds. Now it's about because of it. Exactly. That's a huge change. And I bet you next time there's going to be more exemptions. Probably. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I'm going to eliminate it. I mean, I try to eliminate all labeling language, but that is a big way. Then there's not even any is. I mean, yeah. I mean, that actually is a big part.