The Iced Coffee Hour - Confronting The $100,000,000 Man | Why He’s Giving It All Away

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

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Welcome back again to the ice coffee hour with Graham, Jack, and Alex, where we will talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all things awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for making the time for us. No, you bet. Thanks for having me back again. Yeah. So this is unusual. But we had you on, what was it, two weeks ago?

Yeah, two weeks ago. We've never had a guest so requested before, ever. Everyone was asking me, when are you going to get Alex back on the podcast? When is he coming back on? To the point where you can't ignore it anymore, we have to get you. you back on. This has never happened this quickly. I was wildly insecure about making the second one because I was like, I will probably know something up in some way. We did set expectations high. Oh, yeah. I was like, I want to reset the expectations for everybody who's watching or who's watching

who watched the first one is now watching the second one. It's got to be worse. Right. So we're going to set them all the way down at the bottom so that we just have room for a pleasant surprise. There we go. That's good. So for those who have not seen the first episode, give us a bit of a backstory on who you are, what you do, and your $100 million business. So I started, I was a management consultant right out of college, didn't enjoy that, questioned my life because I was like, I don't really think this is enjoyable for me. Is this all there is? I had my like rock top moment.

And so I sold everything I had, packed my car, I drove to California because that was the lane of opportunity as I saw it. And I was like, I'm going to do fitness, which was totally different than defense contracting for the government. Talked to a bunch of people. Was able to find somebody who could be like a mentor for me. Stayed with him for three months working every hour of the day to learn the business. Started my own gym.

Couldn't afford two rents. Slept on the floor for the first nine months. Built that one up. And then I opened up my second location 15 months in just off the cash row from the first one. And every six months thereafter, I opened a location until I had six. I sold those and started doing gym turnarounds. So we'd fly around to gyms and just like do all the stuff that I had learned at my location. locations and we would fill them up in 30 days. And that was kind of our, our big offers. Like,

I'll fill your gym in 30 days and you don't have to pay me anything, which was, as you can imagine, pretty compelling. And a lot of gyms took me up on it. And I had more demand than I had ability to service it. So we got up to do an eight gym turn arounds a month. But logistically, it was very difficult. And I had a lot of risk that I was getting exposed to for funding all the cash for all of these locations. And then a couple of, I would say, like bad eggs ended up happening, which it doesn't take a lot of bad eggs to just ruin the margin in the business. And so it was just very logistically difficult. And so we almost got out of the gym business altogether. But as a matter of chance, I was calling the eight gyms that were supposed to launch the next

month and told them that I wasn't going to be in the business anymore. And I was just selling my secrets because we were just going to do weight loss direct to consumer. And it was working. And so they were like, dude, I need this. Like if I don't have this, my gym's going to go under. I just refinance my house. Like this, this has to, this has to happen. And so I said, you know what? I will tell you how to do everything, but I'm not flying out there to save you if you can't sell. And they're like, no, no, that's fine. And so I picked the number. They were like, how much? And so I picked the highest number I could possibly think of at the time, which was $6,000. And they said, sure. And I just remember, like, looking at the phone and being like,

holy shit. Like, did that just happen? And I called the next guy. Same conversation. How much? $8.000. Same conversation. Next guy. How much? 10 grand. And I did like $60,000 in sales than one day. And my mind, like my entire world changed. And that's when we switched from doing a done for you, turnaround model to a done with you licensing model. And that was like, it was this tiny little half step. And as a correlator for the audience, I think it's kind of interesting because if you think about the actual skill set that that I had during the period of time, I had the same skill set. I knew how to market. I knew how to sell. I knew how to build a team. And in Opportunity Vehicle number one, I was running and scaling gyms. And that was reasonably profitable. But it was not like I

wasn't, you know, hoodrich. The second version of that same bucket of skills became doing turnarounds for other people's gym. So flying out, using those skills at separate locations, made more money doing that, a few hundred thousand dollars a month at that point. And then went from there to packaging all of those system skills processes, et cetera, for lots of gym owners. So my incremental cost per unit sold was basically zero. And, And so that and the value of the thing that I was selling was significantly higher. And so I was going up in leverage on the opportunities that I was pursuing. And with each of those jumps, I added a zero to my monthly income.

And so once we got into the licensing business, that's when we started taking home a million a month plus every single month for years. And so I always just think it's interesting to look at like the same skill set by and large, but just wrapped in a different opportunity vehicle yields outsized returns. And that was, I think, part of the conversation where I think in the last call, our last podcast, was just how can we think of the highest leverage opportunity vehicle with the skills in the audience and the media that you have? And so anyways, did a licensing business. Then we started a supplement business to sell through the distribution base. We ended up licensing about 4,500 facilities, licensed the model. And then in 2020 or 2019, we started our software company. And then in 2021, we ended up selling.

a majority stake of the supplement company and the licensing company to APG, which is private equity group out of San Francisco at $46.2 million evaluation. I sold two thirds. And then for the software company, I'm under NDA for the finances around it, but I can say that the trailing 12 months was $12 million for that business. So that leaves us just about to where we're at now, which is now we run a private equity fund, which is private equity. on one side, venture capital on the third circle, and then start the second circle, and the third circle would be management consulting. So it's kind of at the intersection of those three things. And so we specialize in e-learning, service, licensing, coaching type businesses,

because that's something that I'm just particularly passionate about is that I think that education is the only way that we can get out of, we can move forward. And so I think that the education system overall is becoming increasingly fragmented, just like media has become fragmented into these silos, these verticals. And it's much less about the generalist education and much more about the niche down education. And so we try, I believe I want to find the best, you know, mechanic and how he teaches mechanics to run better shops. I want to find the best salon owner so she can help salon owners run better salon clinics. I want to find the best lawn care guy and how he can package and sell his ability to help other people who do lawn care because it's so

much more practical. If you know you're going to go to loan care, there's no college for that and there should be. And so that's kind of our investment thesis for acquisition. Not common. That's what we do now and the portfolio does right now over $100 million a year. Well, education starts really early. Yeah. How would you change that right now with, let's say, the current schooling system, which seems to teach you kind of how to stay in line, how to think like everybody else, get your homework done on time, you got to show up at, you know, 8 a.m., school ends at 3. Do you think that's a good model? I mean, obviously, you're baiting me. But tell me your thoughts on that.

I think, so I've, two broad statements is, I think the purpose of education is teach people how to think rather than how to memorize. And especially now with technology that we have, if you can pass a test with having an iPhone with you, then in my opinion, the test was poorly designed because it's not going to, and then we have to rewind into like, what is the purpose of education, right? Education, the education system overall is the product of that is people who can add value to society, right? That's the, that's the product of the education system. the raw units are humans. The output of the system is people who can add value to society. Okay, cool. So if that's the system, then there's a lot of leeway there in terms of how we can get there.

I think the system that we have set up is inherited from the factory worker, you know, when it was being designed versus now. Now I think we need a lot more problem solving skills than we did back then, a lot more dynamic thinking processes, or sorry, divergent thinking processes. and if you're not familiar, this is a fun little exercise. So there's, what school teaches right now is convergent thinking. And so that means that there's multiple variables and one correct answer, right? And so it's like one plus one equals two.

There's only one correct answer. And now they're even telling you there's only one way to find the answer. And if you don't find it the way they want you to find it, then it's also wrong, which is ridiculous. But anyways, divergent thinking is when you have multiple variables, but multiple correct answers, which is like how many different ways? can you use a brick. And what's interesting about that is that you can also have multiple right answers

and some answers that are more right than others, which becomes very difficult to grade, but also how the world works. And we're rewarded based on how right our YouTube video really is, right? Or how right our article is or how right our product is and how we can solve problems using more creative methods than trying to converge on a single answer. Because if it's a convergent thinking process for the most part,

it's already been kind of automated and everyone can do it. Right. You get paid for what you can think of in the creative box of like what are other people not thinking of. And so I think that more of the education system to be around divergent thinking and divergent problem solving. You think that's ever going to happen? No. Mostly just because of the power dynamics that exist. And like if you've ever saw the documentary waiting for Superman, it was one of the only movies that I've cried during because it was just the education system.

And it was just showing how there are so many. impediments to it getting fixed. It's not just one party. Like you've got the teachers unions. You've got the funding for the schools. You've got like there's all of these things that are almost all diametrically opposed to one another. And then the only people really suffer are the kids. And then ultimately the country. So anyways, I do think that the solution is, I think the way that it'll have to get solved is that people, there is an alternative schooling system that gets developed that because of technology, in Volovaravicon said this, but technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production,

which means if you're the best in the world, you get to do it for everyone, right? Which a lot of people don't like from a capitalist perspective, but that's also silly because I feel like that's just Pareto at work. But why would you not want the best math teacher teaching everyone math? Like, it makes sense. And because there's zero cost of duplication, and now everyone's kind of understands how Zoom works

and how, like, we can continue to using life virtually, like there's really no reason to have, Now, it gets scary because teachers, unions, and what are all these people going to do for work and all that stuff. But like the value, just like the switchboards for when there used to be girls who would switch for telephones, they're like, what would we're going to do when technology automates that? There will be other, like, Web 3 is just blowing up. There will be jobs as we solve new problems. We'll create new ones. Yeah.

Right. And so to say, like, we have to keep something that doesn't make sense, doesn't provide value to the system for the sake of it, doesn't make sense to me. And so I think that it would probably have to be a new architecture where the, the best. best people teach and then kids learn probably at their own pace and the testing would probably have to change in order for it to be more real world. And if we wanted it to be real world, then I think you need to match conditions, which is real world. You have your phone. Like now take the test. Yeah. Don't you think that like the schooling system would need to be somewhat localized though? Like you can't have one person teaching over too big of a like a match

one person controlling everyone's math. Like if you have one math teacher, you know, that's teaching everyone in the country, don't you think that there's like an advantage to having like because each little part in each country has, and it doesn't have to be one person. It's more like, it could be one system.

You know, I mean like that's, that's more semantics. You know what I mean? And if the best person is more localized by the way they speak or whatever than sure. But I mean, we're sitting next to Graham,

who's got a massive personal financial channel. And so if you're the best of personal finance, then more people will go to you. So like, that makes sense. It does. Your schooling system does remind me. I completely forgot about, Jack, I don't think you know about this. So in kindergarten, I had issues. And in fact, my parents, explains a lot.

My parents pulled me out of the school because after recess, they wanted all the kids to line up in order on this yellow line that led up to the front door. And so all the kids were just to line up on that line. The bell was ring and we all had to walk in one by one. And I didn't want to stand on that line. And the teachers got really upset at me because I didn't stand on the line. Why didn't you want to stand on it? I don't remember. I think at the point I just didn't see, I thought it was stupid or like I just didn't get why I needed to stand in the line.

I didn't like standing on the line. And my parents pulled me out mid-year kindergarten to go to an alternative school. And that's the school that didn't have any grades. They had no assigned seating. It was basically a big room. And this continued, by the way. So this school went until eighth grade. But no grades.

It was either you got a check, a check plus, or a check minus on any assignments that may be. And the assignments were kind of like BS anyway. They're like, you know, draw something or like, tell us to share something that you're excited about. But I loved it. It's amazing. But that's what it really helped me because I hated, like, I hated homework. I hated tests. I didn't like any of it.

And I just wanted to do my thing. But even being in kindergarten, you were the same person as you are today. Yeah, I didn't want to do. It's like you only do what you want to do when you want to do it. And that's incredible that it's like traced all the way back to when you're in kindergarten. Might be great parenting too. Because I would say that I was very different when I was younger because it was very much like, if I wasn't on the yellow line, my daughter would like, why weren't you on the yellow line?

Like, you know, right. And then that would be that. That would be the end of that conversation. and I would be on the other line the next morning. And so it's great parenting, too, that they would let you do your thing. That is very true. But I do think that really helps to have something that's different. That's interesting to me because you were an academic, right?

And if you could go back in time, do you think you would have spent so much time trying to do so well in school? It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here. It's impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Yes, because I think if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well. And that's more of like a personal belief. Was school worth doing, though? I think that it depends on what age. if you're learning to work hard and if you're like learning what hard work is,

then I think that is a valuable lesson. If we're like the actual subject matter, you know, more or less irrelevant. I think that once people understand math and reading, then that's that's pretty much what you need to go and learn the world. So that's, you know, if I were to like make recommendations to college students, I would say be a math and English double major because that's everything you need for life,

much more so than the other. But even with math classes, shouldn't they be teaching you how to use the iPhone app on like how to do math and like here's an iPhone? We all get iPhones. Let's add, subtract. Here's how you could do this. Here's a more complicated calculator. I think that there's an element to it that should be there.

Having a baseline of intelligence for math, I think, is useful. I had to do. So I used to be really bad at math or at least I identified with being bad at math. and it was until my mid-20s where I decided I wasn't going to be bad at math anymore. And so I actually stopped using a calculator, which would make it seem like I'm contradicting my point, and only did mental math for like a number of years and calculated a tip, you know, on the bill with mental math. And I would try and, you know, do all the marketing metrics and all the sales metrics just in my head.

And then I would still use the calculator to check myself. And then you get better and better and better at it. And so I think there's like, there's an essence of having like a semblance of like being, directionally correct so that you can make kind of large quick decisions. But in terms of like exact calculations, the calculator does make more sense. Also just using Excel for most people's life is probably even better than learning a calculator. Like I bought a book in Excel when I was in college and I was like, why are we not learning this? Like every single job, you need to learn how to use Excel. I agree. Personal find. Like there's so many uses for it and I had to learn how to do all the,

it was just a book of the equations like, you know, equals sum. And I was like, oh, that's how you do that. Like I had no idea. And so I think those would be the more useful things. But I mean, a lot of people know that there's problems with the education system. But, you know, they say you, I hear, I forget, I see, I remember, I do and I understand. So that's Confucius. And so I think if there were more, like, if I were to create a school around a skill, the school would be doing the scale. So if I wanted to teach sales, like they'd be selling. They wouldn't be learning sales theory. And so I think that there needs to be more application of the stuff to what people are going to use it in the real world. It's just so difficult to change curriculum. So I think it's going to have to be an alternative

path that's really flexible that continues. And they can't do the same thing the old old one did, which is like this is now the way things are because then it'll get outdated too. So there has to be a built-in kind of innovation wheel for not just adding, but also subtracting. Things are no longer useful because I think that's what people have more fear of. They just want to keep adding and adding adding, but they don't also just like say, this isn't really high utility. If we could start all over again will we include this course or we include this method probably not so let's just let it go yeah it's too bad that you couldn't create some sort of curriculum like that though like like a practical just a two-year thing that uh you know might be 10 grand or something like that

i don't know how much you would charge for that but for two years just practical life skills selling excel i think Photoshop would be yeah would be on that uh social media how to make a good ticot how to keep retention you know how to send an email yeah that's that's a big one how to message people. Yeah. It's because fundamentally this is just how to communicate, how to human. Right, right. Right.

That's what it is. And yeah, and we have to learn a lot of these things on our own. And there is the alternative education industry, which, you know, you have a course. And, like, there's, there's, you can depend on how you look at it. Like a franchise is an education system. It's just packaged differently. And so, like, there's lots of different ways of skinning the education game. But I think alternative is the way that is going to, like, is the only way that I think

it will emerge. How would you reach out to somebody? Because that's an interesting topic. How do you get someone else's attention? Let's say, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk's. Like someone who's like typically out of reach for most people,

how would you go about teaching somebody to have access to that person or even just get their attention? It would be hard. I mean, those are really extreme examples because those guys have everything, you know, and they probably have a lot of people reaching out to them.

So I think, think the way to get there would be to have to go through like from the heart. So it's just continue to network to to try and find out information that are that's not as public about the things that they like. Because anything that is publicly known that other people have already like gotten him his favorite jersey to his fate. You know like those are those are the obvious ones but it's the less obvious ones. And then trying to figure out a way that that would get it just like you're just trying to get noticed. And they're like, huh. And to be fair, it would still be hard. Because I mean they are the richest men in the world. Like the amount of money they have is is hard

to comprehend. Right. And so, like, there's no, there's no monetary value that can be delivered to them, right? And there's really no status value that can be delivered to them. So it's like, how do I add value to someone's life? And so I think that if I were, this is me just thinking out a lot. If I try to add value or gain access to somebody like that, it would have to be from the personal side.

Like, those people have everything material they could possibly want. And so it would have to be something immaterial, like not intangible that I think would, would hit their radar. But first, we have to thank our sponsor. Storyblocks. Jack, where have you been all week? I haven't seen you. Alex, I've been editing. I mean, you edit too. I'm sure you understand. Yeah, Jack, but I use story blocks. Storyblocks is a subscription service that gives you instant access to millions of high quality, royalty-free, HD and 4K footage, templates, images, and sound effects just like this one.

Ever since I started using story blocks, my edits have gotten way better and it takes significantly less time to do them. I've been able to reinvest the time that I've saved with Storyblocks back into my creative vision so that I can create things that I'm truly proud of. Whether you're part of a large media company or you're just trying to jumpstart your next creative passion project, StoryBlocks is the perfect solution for you. With their flexible and scalable subscription plans, you can start creating content with the tools you need without having to worry about a budget. Plus, their unlimited all access plan lets you download unlimited assets from all three of

their libraries. Creative burnout is a thing, and cutting out wasted time can help you find that inspiration again. Take it from us. subscribe to story blocks for about a year now and we've noticed a significant difference in our work quality ever since. So learn how to take your editing to the next level when you visit storyblocks.com slash ICH. That's storyblocks.com slash ICH or click the link down below in the description. Thank you so much story blocks and back to the podcast. Yeah, with Elon Musk, I think it's privacy. It reminds me of the Twitter, the Twitter guy. Yeah. Twitter who is, yeah, tracking his jets, got us

attention, got him to DM him. But now he's tracking the yachts, right? Yeah. Well, I thought he was doing the Russia. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea. I try not to pay attention to the news. All right. Yeah, no, this is a kid. How old was he?

15, 16. He's young. He was like in high school. Yeah, 16 years old. And he got Elon Musk's attention because he was tracking his private jet. Yeah. And he would post the coordinates on Twitter. He'd be like, his jet went from this location to this location and then people could speculate from there well why is you going to this part in in texas a lot is there maybe something there that they're building yeah uh so then Elon Musk DM'd him and basically just said like hey would you mind taking this down like you know privacy is important to me yeah and then the kid said no and Elon Musk offered him five thousand dollars and then the

kid counted back 50,000 dollars and then Elon Musk said you know what uh like i'd rather you know I'd rather not pay for something like this or it was something like that or he just didn't respond, which at that point sets up in the narrative that people could just track him and he'll pay them off, which I think is probably better to not engage with that. It's blackmail. It's a version of blackmail. Exactly. So, but now that same kid is tracking Russian yachts. Weird.

Yeah, but he's getting a lot, but he's getting a lot of attention for it. Well, I think it's important to mention that he's not just tracking them and posting tweets. I mean, he's developing software to do this automatically at 16 years old. So he's a bright kid. Yeah. So he's getting a lot of attention from that. I see him every few days now on the headline of like CNBC, CNN, you know. What's the general idea of them?

Do people like him or do they not? With the Elon Musk, it was 50-50. Some people were really for it and some people were really against it and they thought it was creepy and invasion of privacy. But when it comes to tracking Russian yachts, it seems like everyone is on, not everyone, but a lot of people are on his side on that one. Except for the Russians. And they think that he's doing a service.

Yeah. Huh. So you mentioned like during that that you don't pay attention to news at all. No. Why not? I can't control anything. So like there's no, to me there's no added value. Like I don't my life does not improve as a result of news at all.

It does get worse though. And so for me like eliminating news is just eliminating a negative. It's like, do I want to have cortisol today? Sure. Let me check the news. Like, you know, I could go for more stress. Do you want some stress? Let's go check the news because like I think.

I think, I can't remember where I heard this quote, but it was, the job of the news is to make everyone's problem your problem. And so I have this, that's on my phone, but a journalist made this thing of like, what makes something newsworthy? And so it's basically ways that they try and manipulate news in order to make it more interesting. So it's like, how do we make something odd or unusual or bizarre? How do we make something more local to people? How do we make it more recent? You know, like, recency is a component of newsworthiness. And there was four other ones. I can't remember. But it was just like there's a formula. for what creates news. And I don't want to be the product for news. Because news is, what a lot of people don't know is like news stations are private. So, like, they're just like HBO. Like, they're just like HBO. They have programming and people show up for their shows and they have commercials, which is how they make money.

And so, like, their intention is to keep attention not to, you know, disseminate truth. Right? That's not the goal. because the thing is, is like, the really true stuff is not interesting and is, and will fail compared to a sensationalized news. Like, it's just dollars, dollars and cents. So they have to make it. And that's just the nature of the business. And I understand that. I'm not poo-pooing it, but I don't necessarily need to subscribe to it. You know what I mean? Like people want to give their attention to it. So then there will be somebody who will sell those eyeballs to advertisers. But their intention is not to educate me. Their intention is to make the world's problem is my problem. And I have enough problems. And so I don't need to add more that are irrelevant to me. to my list. Yeah. So on the scale of understanding what's going on in the world, would you say you're closer to like a one out of 10, like no nothing? Probably a two. Okay. Probably a two. What would you say you are, Graham? Oh gosh, probably an eight and a half to a nine. Wow. Yeah. I'm probably a four. You're four? Yeah. I'm super out of touch as well. Yeah. Really? Yeah. See, I spend all day

reading the news and I see everything that, well, stock market or economy related news. So I see everything that goes on, but also worldwide events have a big impact on that. So I have to understand those events to be able to summarize that information if I need to. So yeah, the news is something for years now. I've read everything. I need to be able to read that so you could sell the eyeballs because you basically the news right. Yeah. You just what you mentioned. Yeah. I get it. We try to make things relevant, you know, recent, stuff like that. And I've, I'm continuing to move in this direction of like an anti-information. diet. But like when I work now, I realize that I can just, if I just remove my phone altogether from

the room, my level of focus just goes, it feels like I'm on drugs. Because in what's crazy, though, is that especially if you have, so now I just take my phone when I leave, but like when I'm at home, it's not with me because anything that's work related, I have Slack and anything, and unfortunately, I feel like the vast majority of like the text messages that I get are usually requests. things that people want from me, want me to meet, want me to talk, want me to whatever. And so I end up just getting stressed from seeing all the messages. And so I may end up just changing my number again, but like, which I do every so often. But, but just putting it away. When I go to sit down to my computer, I still feel like that ghost itch of like, I want to reach for my phone. I like,

there was a, oh, there's a pause point here for like a split second. Let me grab my phone just for that dopamine. Yeah. And so like I try to not do that. And, media sources, you know, social media and news in general. I don't consume any formal news. The only news I get is as I'm posting stuff on social media so that I can get it out. But I'm currently trying to figure out like a desktop version of that so I can just plan it so I don't have to consume. It's just really hard. You know what I mean? At least for me. And like I notice if I start my day consuming some social media like my, I'm just not as sharp. You know what I mean? I feel like I'm a little bit fogier. And I think it's just like I'm like it's like you get oversawful. stimulated and then everything else seems less interesting by compare you know by contrast yeah so just

eliminating it overall uh has been very very helpful for would you start doing that um when my new executive assistant came in that i was telling you yeah so this is crazy jack okay so uh Alex is telling me if you want to coordinate to go to dinner you just text this number and i'm like all right so i text the number and she's like this time this date does that work with you it's like yeah that works and she's like all right, you're going to go to this place at this time. I was like, okay. And I asked Alice, I said, hey, do you know where you're going? He's like, no.

She just tells me where to show up. It's great. And like, how did you pick this place? She knows my preferences. Yeah. Yes, it's great. So he doesn't know where he's showing up. But do you know who you're meeting most of the time?

Yeah, she'll give you. So do you want to go to dinner with Graham? And you're like, no or yeah. And then she's like, all right, I'll pick out of time. The schedule is, yeah. How crazy is that? That's incredible. He doesn't even know where he's going.

Like I would want to know like this place or this place or what are the preferences. No, it's just, show up there. Those are all these micro decisions that you have to make that are like big picture irrelevant. You know what I mean? Like what restaurant are we going to go to? Well, what time are like she knows that on week nights I want to be done by X time so that I can get the sleep that I want.

And so she just planned. Because like if you think about all the micro decisions you have and you think about them ahead of time, you already have a decision making process. You just haven't like spoken it out loud. Like for Layla and I, if we're going on commercial flights, here's a heck, if you go to two aisle seats that are on either side. You both get aisle seats. You get to be next to each other,

but rather than having that one person who gets the middle seat that has to like trade off, two aisle seats works great. Right? And so she knows that that's our preference. And so she will always go and try and find two aisle seats

that are close to each other. And if those aren't available, what's the backup? What's the decision making process? So it's like you outline all of those things, but you do it for everything. So it's like, if we're at an event, what type of, you know,

food are you going to request? I'm always going to probably have the chicken dish. I want them to double the chicken and I probably want some extra carbs on the side. Cool. So she knows that. So when I go to events, there's like, here's your lunch. And I'm like, great.

And I don't have to ask for it. She already knows the preferences are. And so the idea, and it took me a really long time to understand this because I have, I have gone through. It's actually something that I was like really insecure about. I've gone through eight executive assistants. Wow. Yeah. Why?

I mean, there's two to tango, right? Partially me, partially them, just being real. But I think that a lot of, I mean, fundamentally, it's my first. fall because I didn't know what I was looking for, right? And so if you don't know what you're looking for, it's very hard to find it. And so that's why this time it's been so great for me because she came in and she was a, you know, a 20 year veteran executive assistant. She's like, this is how this is going to go. I was like, yes, this is what I, like, I knew within a day. I was like, this is going to work. And every other one was like, maybe it'll get better, you know, like maybe they'll come around. Like I was like

rooting for them, but like it wasn't, you know, great. But this one, day one, I knew. And so the difference is a true executive assistant is almost like a time coach it's almost like a partner with you where you're both working to optimize you right so it's not like a administrative assistant which is different which is just like I will I will handle your scheduling and you know answer the phone and respond to emails and things like that but like a true executive assistant is somebody who's almost like a partner at the executive level who understands business at a very high level can make business decisions on your behalf knows your like personal preferences, things like that. But for me, it's very much like a time coach. So when I wake up, every minute of my day is planned. And if I, let's say I finish a task that's supposed to take me,

you know, 40 minutes and it takes me 22. I'd be like, Bonnie, I've got 18 minutes. What do I do? And she's like, oh, I'll pull this from tomorrow and I'll slide this in and I'll see if I can move this to that. And so that, and like I had a handful of preferences. I was like no white space. So for me on my calendar, I just don't want any white space because I just wanted like from the time I start to time I end, I just wanted to be going. And so by doing it that way, though, it's just like, I am just working on whatever's in front of me, and she slides things in, and I'm just in communication with her of like, and hey, this person wants to do something, I just send it to her.

And then she goes and talks and says, okay, do, you know, and I get a lot of podcast requests, things like that. And so, you know, rather than me having the awkward, like, hey, like, I get 10 of these a day. Like, can you just give us some stats and what's your audience and things like that? It's like that entire process she can just handle. And I don't have to go, like, look at their profile, see what, like, she knows what my decision-making criteria is for all of those things and what's a yes and what's a no. And so it just allows me to outsource more and more and more of the decisions that are lower value add to portfolio company growth so that I can just purely focus on the things that have the highest leverage. Has she ever scheduled something that you disagreed with?

Like, let's say this podcast is an example, where she would schedule you on something like that. and you're like, you know, I don't want to do that, though. She probably will. She hasn't yet. But, I mean, if she did, I would say, like, here, like, we have to update some decision criteria. Like, in this instance, this is why I wouldn't. And then, I mean, I wouldn't be upset. Because if I would only be, not upset, but I would only be maybe disappointed or whatever,

or frustrated or annoyed if the decision criteria that we had laid out was somehow not followed. But if someone, if I had it, I have to, if I have to add to it, then that's just like an opportunity to make the thing better. So like that's, I wouldn't be upset about something like that. Got it. How did you find her? Um, is there an agency? We'd actually known each other for a long time. Right. Um, yeah, we'd known each other for a long time. She was an executive assistant of a really good friend of mine for eight years. Um, and then as their company grew and like, you know, organization shifted around, um, it made more sense for her to, to pursue a different opportunity and whatnot. And so, um, we'd known each other already. And so like, I was always like, I need, I need the her for

me. And then it just so happened and ended up being her. I'm curious if you could say about how much. Yeah, you're going to ask. To me, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, that's what we're all thinking.

There's no way it's less than, we should take a guess. I'm going to say probably a hundred and, you don't have to say exactly, but yeah, I'll say $1.20. No, I'm $75. Say $120.

Yeah, you need to pay someone well. Yeah, if you want somebody who has business acumen, right, and who can, And true, like if I can say, hey, I want you to, you know, I want to make some t-shirts for us. And like, can you make some backpacks? And by the way, can you figure out why the book is not on Amazon Prime? Like, why is it not? Why don't I have the little prime thing? Can you just figure that out? You want somebody who can like go and just take that directive and just solve it. Like, sometimes that's harder to find. And for me, I also want to pay for experience. So even if there

two people that were who might have equal ability, I will usually pay more for the experience because I don't want to have to have this person who's less experienced learn those lessons on my clock. I'd rather come with the solutions preloaded. That's why I'm willing to pay more. Do you fly business or do you fly economy? We fly private mostly. It's just being real. Do you do the Uber black or Uber like the fancy one? Uber? Oh, you mean like Yeah, if you're Uber. You take it a fur. Yeah. Wow.

I have two people who wait outside my house and they carry me everywhere. Let's let's throne. Yeah. It's one of those like I, it's, I almost am embarrassed to say it. But it's like it's there's a handful of things that are really expensive and I feel like they are worth it. And I try and spend the money that we have because it's the only way that money has utility for me rather than just making more money, which then like for what point. So if I have the opportunity to consume benefit for money, I try and use it. And so the speed and convenience that I get from private versus commercial is pretty significant.

And like short flights are like five grand. So it's not like, you know what I mean? And if you're going with somebody else, it's not a huge deal. You know, the longer flights. If you're going cross country, it's like a $50,000 flight. But, you know, it just depends on what you're looking for. So I would say shorter flights. We tend to fly private.

Longer flights. I'm also like more weary of small. all plane. So I also will just, you know, fly first class on, on the commercial. Let's talk a little bit more about time management. Because it seems like you can get a lot of stuff done in a very small frame of time. So like, let's, let's walk us through your day. You mentioned on the last podcast, you wake up extremely early. Yeah. And just for the audience, like, it's not because I have like some like superhuman discipline. I just think I think I just fall, I get tired early. So like, if you fall asleep at nine or 10, like you wake up at four or five. Like, it's not, it's not like a superhero thing. It's been

seven hours. Like, I can wake up now. Um, so I don't, so I'll tell you a couple things. So number one is I don't have a wake up alarm. I have a go to bed alarm, um, which is like, hey, you should be winding down by now. I don't even really need to do it anymore because I've just been doing it for such a long time. But when I started it, I wanted to set myself a go to bed alarm. Um, so we got about around the same time. Um, I usually know what I'm going to do the next day before I go to bed. That's kind of how I clear my mental plate. And I do think, and I know it sounds kind of weird in woo-woo, but like, I think that overnight my subconscious works on some of the problems because I, I almost like always wake up with like really interesting solutions in the morning to some of the problems I went to

bed with. And so it just gives me like great momentum to start my day. But when we, when we wake up, my wife and I wake up about the same time, we usually have coffee in the morning together. That's kind of like our 30 minutes to just like hang out, chill, watch the sunrise. It's usually between four and five. Wow. So we hang out then, watch the sun. If in that time, you know, time prize, the sun is coming up. If it's not, then we don't watch it. But if we can, we do. And then from there, I go to my office and I start working. And she does her own thing. And then we meet again for lunch. And then I go back to work. And then that's my day. And then you cut it off. at a specific hour.

I think four-ish. Four. It's not a specific hour. It's like, you know, if I've got a call, you know, usually my calls end around four-ish. Do you work really hard at four to basically switch off like from work mode into like personal mode where it's just like a light switch or is still open? Like if something comes up with work-wise,

you're going to handle it. Yeah, I don't have like, I, so it's, I'm just trying to say this the right way. I don't get the same level of stress that I used to from work. And I feel like, Like, I've worked a lot on that side of, like, not being stressed by work. And I think a big part of that was realizing, like, last year that I don't have to work, like, at all, at all.

And so kind of confronting that and then realizing that I'm choosing to do this, kind of relieved me of the stress that was surrounding. And I'm like, if you don't like this, like, basically, like, stop complaining to yourself. Like, you're choosing to do this and you have no reason. Like, there's no point of you doing this. And so not having the stress around it has decreased. like a lot any kind of negative stuff associated with it and so you know i'll stop taking calls it for but if someone slacks me i like but i usually i don't i would say i delineate that from like i'm not going to sit down at the computer um but i don't have like hardened fest rules if there's something

that i want to do i'll do it yeah but how do you mentally switch off from work mode at that hour because for me i find it very difficult if i'm focusing i can't take a lunch let's just say i even when i wake up i can't do just like a 30 minutes just to kind of do nothing. I have to immediately start. Once I start, I continue that all day. If I have a break, it throws me off. But even when I stop sometimes, I can't, that switch is still on. So I'm always in my head. Just like thinking. You're like eating and you're like, don't talk to me too much. I really want to keep thinking. Yeah. And sometimes it's like, you know, it's, I won't even have my phone. I'll just be thinking. Just like that quiet space. Totally. So I split my day.

So I should probably give more detail. So I split my day between kind of high leverage work, which is like me doing stuff. And then me communicating with companies, which is usually the afternoon. So until, you know, noon. So basically, you know, four or five until noon is when I get all of my work done. So that's when I, if I want to build presentations or if I make content or if I want to write the book or, you know, the things that I do that are like one of the companies wants to whatever. It doesn't matter. I'll write down my thoughts or review stuff in the morning.

And then the afternoon is when I do like my communication with people. Because for me, like I want to be, for me, I, like some people function really well late at night. I don't. I'm much better like super early in the morning. And that's where I get my highest leverage on my time. And so in the afternoons, when I don't need that creative juice, I can still be super effective on meetings. I just, I'm not thinking like, how do I say this framework differently? Like, which is a kind of abstract concept and more difficult. So I understand what we're saying. But my cutoff, my cutoff for like when I stop quote working is at noon. It's actually when I have lunch is usually what I'm done with my, my, what I would consider deep work for the day. And that's probably just because of the difference in the nature of the work. Okay. And then after 4 or 5 p.m. once you shut everything off work-wise or try to, like, how do you spend your time? Do you just like relax with a movie? So we actually do go out.

Yeah, we do go out to dinner a lot, a lot, a lot every night actually. Every night? Yeah. Yeah. The guy at Maastro's like, welcome back. We see you all the time, like joking around. Yeah. Wow.

What's your favorite restaurants? And what's your food budget? I mean, maybe you have no idea. So we, I mean, it's, it's aggressive. It's a lot. It's a great. What a word. It's a lot.

I like it. Yeah, I mean, we. Very often. It's aggressive. Just like, realistically, we probably spend between 12 and 15,000 a month on going out to eat. Would you say that there's like a return on that because you can relax so much that you can like cycle that back into like somewhat embarrassed by this? but it's so it was I think we talked about this last time is that like again like if you could pay a dollar to go out would you go out right so yeah I would pay a dollar to go to master's every night rather than staying in and so for us because we work all day at home like going out to get dinner is like the only real time I leave besides going to the gym and so like that's kind of why like going out to eat has serves multiple purposes not just the food it's much more so like we sit down we get to connect we you know we're served which is not It doesn't have to be five-star.

I would say like two-thirds of the time. It's five-star restaurants. And I think a big portion of that is because of the convenience of where I live. So currently I'm running a place that's literally on this trip. And so like I have 45-star restaurants like connected to the building. So it's just like if there were a Chipotle downstairs. I probably more Chipotle. But it just so happens that it's Mastros is the closest restaurant to me.

So I go there a lot. So like massive difference in price, but relative price not so much. And so yeah. So we go out to dinner. I mean pretty much since we got to Vegas. We've gone out to dinner. Not pretty much. We've gone out every single night.

We've never cooked once. So that's, so in terms of best places, I think Delilah is really good. I think they have the best dessert in Vegas. If anyone's curious, Delilah is exceptional. Man, so many of them are really good because they're just, they're all the best places in Vegas. And Vegas is some of the best dining in the world. It's just, it's crazy. But I will tell you this.

The, the marginal utility of five-star dining decreases very quickly. Like at the same, like you open the menu and it's the same stuff. It's like you've got a carpatia, you've got a steak tartar, you've got a tuna tartar, you've got some shrimp cocktail of some sort. There's some fancier bread selection that you can opt for for $5. And you've got a couple salads. And then, you know, they've got their really expensive steaks, their medium expensive steaks. And then they've got the seafood selection.

They've a Chilean Seabass. Like they're all the same. But you don't look at prices at all. No. No. I don't. And you seem like you'd be a big tipper. I am.

You're a big tipper? Yeah. Because it's interesting. After our podcast last time, unfortunately, we talked about this off camera, but you mentioned that you want to get rid of all of your money. Like when you die,

you're not going to pass it on to your kids or anything. Yeah. There's a pledge or something for that. Well, I mean, there's the giving pledge, but, you know,

we already donated our, like our states have already been set up to be given away. I haven't signed any pledges for it. But, yeah. And it's, I mean, well, I guess we're going to get into it.

So, So it's just that like whenever I, so I'll tell you a really interesting example that I'll drive this home. This is like, and this is recent. So my, my, my great, great grandfather was, was, he was the, he was a ruler in Iran prior to the Shah. And so we were like, I'm directly descendant from him. Now that sounds fancy. It doesn't mean anything, which is going to prove my point. He had 400 children.

From those 400 children was my great-grandfather. He was one of 19. Then there was my grandfather. Then there's my dad. And then there's me. Right. And so he was a ruler of a country. So you talk about wealth and status and everything, right?

I actually can't even remember his name. And so that's just five generations. And so the idea that we have of like, I want to like create a legacy. It's like, dude, you're not making a legacy. He was ruler of a country. I can't even remember his name and related to him. Right.

And so, you know, if you do that enough times, it just becomes humans, right? Like the difference and that's, and that becomes a very like humanitarian perspective too because if you, if you mix bloodlines enough times, it's just people, right? And you take your genes, split them, split them, split them,

you do it 10 times, you know, half to the 10th power. is very, very small number, right? In terms of what percentage of it is still you, if you still have, like, pride in your biology being passed on, which also gets into, like, having children versus not having children, because then that's a whole other, like, interesting can of worms. But as a result of that kind of thought process,

the point of leaving a legacy in, like, capital L legacy of, like, this is going to last past me doesn't really make sense because the people who I'm leaving it to will never know who I am, and it will get divided so many times as well between all of those people would have to be such an insane amount of money, which then would become a marginal amount of money once it's divided enough times. So for both of those reasons, it wouldn't work. But then on the close-knit basis of like, well, I want to pass it on to my direct descendants, I just don't know many people who have been given lots of money who are better for it.

And so for that reason, it doesn't really, it doesn't seem very beneficial to anything to give it to it. to anyone besides just giving it back to everybody else. And it's also kind of nice because it kind of relieves you of this pressure because then it's just realizing it for what it is, which is it's just a game. Right? Like what we're playing right now is just a made up game to keep us occupied. And so these are just the,

I mean, I gave the casino analogy at the end of the last podcast, but that is how I see it. It's like we're just accumulating chips. They're fake and I can't take them with me. So I'm just pushing them back to the middle of the table, which is what they're going to be done anyways. It's just whether you say like,

they're only going to these players rather than all the players. But like, fast forward three more generations, it is all the players and you don't know the people anyways. Yeah. So like, what does it really matter? Do you want kids? You mentioned, you know, the time commitment of a dog. Yeah, yeah.

You're like, well, you know, it's too much. I can't imagine a child. Yeah, yeah. I think I would probably have different feelings about a child than I would about a dog. And just so the audience can dislike me. So this is my gift for everybody. We had a dog and it just, it just went to the bathroom like eight or ten times a day. And I just, it was too much.

It's like, it was too much. I could have. Did you care for the dog? Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually really like animals. And actually, animals really like me. It's kind of weird. Bailey goes crazy when you get in the house.

But like, it's like, Layla's like, you have calming energy or whatever. You know what I mean? I don't know. But like animals do like me. And I like them back. Like, we're cool. Like we get along. But maybe it's because they know that I'm like, I don't, I don't need them.

You know, like, I was like, we just, you're an animal. I'm an animal. We're both just like doing our own thing. Like, I don't need to take care of you. Right. You know what you need a cat, though. I loved the cat I had. We had a cat and it died after two years.

But cats were way easier. So, uh, so dogs versus cats, like I like the cat, goldfish would work, you know, whatever. But anyways, back to the kid thing. It's something I give a ton of, I've given a ton of, I've given a ton of, of thought too. The pros for me of having a child are the human experience, which is just like this is a part of the human experience that is unique. And I think that would be interesting to go through. That being said, going to prison is also part of the human experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that I should do it. You know, I get, sometimes people are like, I think you and Lela would make

great parents. And I'll say this, and I say this not as a pejorative statement to parenting in general. But I'm using an extreme example to illustrate a point, which is like I could be, and this is not disrespectful to people who may have this job. Man, culture these days. So if I, you know, if I, I could also probably be a really good gas station attendant, right? I could probably be really exceptional with that. It doesn't mean that I should do it. And so just because I might be an exceptional pair, it doesn't mean I should. And I think that there's a in like in the in the cons column, there's a tremendous amount of risk of risk personally that the person doesn't want to do what I want them to do. Right. And so the fact that I still have this desire that I'm

projecting on an unborn child is something that I'm not very comfortable with. Because like if I had one, I would have a hard time saying that I want them to be their own person. I'd want them to be who I want them to be. And so maybe that is the learning of becoming a parent is that you unlearn the expectations of projections that you have on the child. But in terms of like my personal like fulfillment component, I would rather like there's I mean, I'm very obviously I'm very torn about it. But there's so many guys that I've that I've, like, mentored that have taken steps toward me. And like, please help me with business. Please help me in these ways.

And I'm happy to. And, you know, if I had to trade off, I think we're talking about dinners last night. But like the amount of time that a child takes, right? Let's say it's, I don't know, four hours a day, roughly, but in terms like headspace and time spent with them. I was trying, I was actually trying to be really aggressive with four. I'm being really honest. I was being, I was genuinely being, like, really aggressive with four.

I would imagine a child would be like, well, I mean, I'm going to pay help. That's, that's, like, there's going to be help for sure. But even then, it's like helping the help. I would age, though, too. Let's say eight. Let's say eight hours. Okay.

So eight hours a day. So full-time job, right, for the next 20 years. If I had a full-time job in the next 20 years, I could help a hundred thousand or a million people more than I could just two. That just so happened to share my genetics that eventually would get diluted out to nothing. Is that how you base your decisions? I mean, off how many people you could get to.

based on, yeah. Really? Yeah. I mean, that's why, like, where, like, a lot of people want to have kids to give meaning to their lives, right? And as a corollary to this, whenever I see a lot of people doing something, I don't think, oh, that's a great idea. I think, oh, that's a great path to mediocrity. And again, that's going to insult most people because most people do it. So this again, it doesn't have to just apply to children.

You can think about it for everything, which is, like, if you're trying to not be in the majority, because you don't want to be average, then it means that you have to, by definition, not do what everyone else is doing. And so when people are like, I'm taking this action to have children, I would assume that it's probably selfish because you can always count on people to be selfish.

It's not like humans only in this one instance are selfless. Right? They're selfish because they want to look at it and be like, it looks just like me. That's why I love it. You're just like me. Right? I love you. I love me.

Right? Like, and I know, and like, I'm aware of that. Right? And so that's why I'm like, I try and audit. Do I want to have two just because I want to look at a version of myself? You know what I mean?

But then I'm also going to project on this kid's life when he might want to be a ballet dancer or whatever. And if there's anything wrong with him a ballad dancer, but if I'm going to spend eight hours, it's just like I don't feel like I'm providing a lot of value. You know what I mean? And like in terms of... But it sounds like you're thinking of it from an R.O.I.

I'm going to invest all this and I might not get a good R.O.I. compared to the guaranteed R.I. I could get eight hours a day over here. Of helping other people. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really R.O.i of like the world.

particularly. There was a brief moment where I like had an injury where I thought I wasn't able to have kids. Might not turn blacked and I was like oh it is fine but I was like very worried. And so it was really interesting is that during that period of time before I got it looked at I just was like I'm not gonna be able to have kids like that's it right I'm I'm screwed and what was weird is that I ended up becoming almost I became so humanitarian in general like during that like it was like all of my legacy have kids like the desire to progenerate went from being specific to a child to general to everyone because like when you realize you can't have a child then you want to still pass it on and I think

that's just like a human desire right of benefiting the tribe whatever but like you still had this desire and rather than being able to get my fulfillment out of out of one child doing that for me it's like I was forced to just be like well I have to just give to everybody and so I think that was that was actually a really transformative experience for me um And I think it's part of what has shaped a lot of like the thoughts around giving today in general. I'm I'm a little confused and curious, not saying this is wrong or anything. And in fact, I admire this. But why is the like the thing that you hold to the most weight when you're making decisions, how many people you can help?

That could be selfish in and of itself. Probably. Why? Boom. Wow. Do you think things selfish is bad? I like to believe that most people. generally want things that are good for everyone.

So if they pander to what they want themselves, they're generally helping other people. I'd agree with that. But do you think being selfish is bad? Sometimes. I think if it hurts somebody else, then yes. I think if it being selfish is at the detriment of somebody else, or if the net is bad for more people,

if it hurts more people, then it serves you. You also have to define, you know, hurts. Yeah, I know. Well, then you can't. You can't objectively say the assumption is bad. It becomes a circular argument of it's not about being selfish. It's just hurting people is bad.

Yes. Which is the thing, which is irrelevant from the selfish action. Right. So then, sure. I think everyone, you know, many people would. And that's bad in the little B sense rather than the big B sense of like the universe. So anyways. But all that to say, I think people act in their own self-interest.

And that is in comma, that's fine. And we can expect them to do that. And I act in my own self-interest as well. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways. While available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow.

The capable Taos, you deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. S-UvW, German engineered for all. and you're just naturally interested in helping people? I think I get some level of like fulfillment from it. I do. I mean, that's why like the books 99 cents.

The courses are free. Like, you know, and I plan on writing a bunch more books. I think, I mean, it's selfish. Like,

I think I feel good when I do it. And so I do more of it. I have an interesting question for you. So in the last podcast, you mentioned that at one point in your life, you were religious. So what made you make that switch in your head from like going from religion? Because I think you said you were on like a one of those trips.

I'm sorry, I forget what they're called. What made you switch that in your head to go from, you know, this very, very spiritual belief to like almost the complete opposite of like life is life. We die. You know, fact is fact, nihilism as a whole. What made that switch in your head or was it like a long process? I mean, it was a very long process. It was five years. And it was very, very hard for me.

And I think I will say this. The amount of messages I got from people who are Christian and Muslim and other faiths thinking that I attacked them on the last podcast. Like, I don't know how I can make the... You got messages? Yeah, I mean, just... Yeah, just like... And I will say this again.

My statements are not an attack on your religion. They are simply an expression of what conclusions I have come to. and I'll say it right now, I'm wrong. I'm wrong. You're right. Everyone listening to what you believe, you're right. That being said, for me, I was even going to, at the time, a Christian therapist

because I was like, I wanted somebody who understood therapy, but also, like, understood, you know, Christianity so they could kind of, like, work with me on these things. And after, like, a handful of sessions, she just looked at me and she was like, Alex, I think you just need to make a decision. she's like you just she's like you've gathered all the data you've gone you've gone to the courses you did you did a college course on on the the formation of the canon which is like how the

bible was actually put together why things were put in why things were not put in you know like you've you've investigated all this stuff and you're and I was obsessing about it because I just like because I think for me until I understood like why I was here like nothing else mattered to me so it's like and and some people there can just like walk through life without really thinking about it. And in some ways, I'm jealous. You know, they can just, they can just do that. I couldn't.

Like, I was like, why, why am I working? Why, why do I care about money? What's the point of all this? Like, that was always my, my first and most important thought is like, once we answer that box, then everything else kind of falls underneath of it. And so, um, I think it's safe to say that there are very exceptional people who can make arguments on both sides in terms of like there's nothing it doesn't matter and then there's really amazing um apologists like uh ravi zacharias who's an amazing apologize uh who's a christian

there's just there's just a ton of guys right and they're brilliant people and you can listen to both sides the arguments but i think what ends up happening is that on some level you have a belief and i'll rename that as an assumption because all beliefs are assumptions but everyone has these assumptions and at some point you just have to say like okay there's stuff on both sides the jury has to pass a verdict, right? And to say that like, we have cracked it or like Alex has cracked it or like to try, like, the deeper you go in these arguments, the more there are just other arguments that just continue to get pulled.

And that's why I just fell into this rabbit hole where I was like, I need to start becoming a productive member of society because like this is just going on forever. And that's when she was just like, I think you just need to decide. And for me, the thing that felt more true to what, what I actually believed was that I didn't think any of it was real. And I think it was because that initially saddened me, and I didn't want that to be. That's why I spent so much time trying to logic my way in to believing, because I do think it's a better life perspective to believe that there's capital M meaning, that there's somebody

behind the scenes who's directing our lives so we can accomplish some greater goal, right, beyond ourselves. I just don't believe that. I wish I did. I spent five years trying to. I just don't believe it. And for everybody who messaged me and said, I really just need to talk to you for five minutes.

Please don't. I'm good. I'm very content with my belief. And so for me now, I had to learn how to live with that belief and then kind of go from there, which is like, I don't believe that anything happens after we die.

And my evidence for that is that I have been dead because I have not been alive. And I know what it was like before I was alive, which was there was nothing. And I think that that's exactly what it'll be when I am not alive again. So to me, I'm okay with it. And that's fine. Deg's keep taping breaths.

But that's like, and I know it's, I'm not right. You know what I mean? It doesn't, like, that's just my two cents. Alex is two cents on the world. And I think that people just need to figure out a belief. Like, whenever someone states a belief and they're like, well, I don't think that. I'm like, cool. Like, awesome.

I'm as long as like your belief serve you. Great. Like I'm, I'm pro you. It's interesting. Once you, uh, I guess got rid of the idea of,

or you didn't get rid of the idea of religion, but you just deemed it wasn't true for you. Mm-hmm. You described in the last episode that we did with you that you became nihilist. Mm-hmm. Uh, could you define nihilism for those watching? And also once you did become a nihilist,

how did that change your life? Did it change anything on the day to day? Or did it just like basically reaffirms, kind of what you already believe deep down. I think it formal, it crystallized thoughts that I already had. So it's like, you know how you have these thoughts that are ill-defined

are more amorphous and like once you put words to them? You're like, that's what I believe, right? And so I think that once I understood, like I didn't even know nihilism with this thing when someone's like, oh, you sound like you believe in those. Like, oh, but again, that's just a label.

So like people want a lot labels on things because it's easier for us to organize in our minds. But like, I just inherently believe that there is no capital M meaning. That's it. That's all I believe. It's just that there's no capital M meaning to what we're doing. There's little M meaning, as in like, I find this meaningful.

I find this stimulating. I do things that I enjoy. Like, those are things that I find meaningful, little M. But is me doing this podcast, Big M universe meaningful? No, I don't think so. Some people will disagree with me. That's okay. That's just my perspective.

And so in terms of how it shifted my life, it actually, in a lot of ways, dramatically improved my life. what was the worst thing for me was the indecision. That five years was really hard for me because I just, I felt like I couldn't make progress either way. Like, I feel like I needed to either say like, I'm all in, I'm going, you know, all down the religious path.

That's my, that's the game. Or I, um, I actually don't believe this. And people could make the argument, well, there's probably a million shades in between. Sure, but for me there wasn't. This is, this is where I, it was either this or this for me. And so, um, believing that there was no inherent meaning freed me from a lot.

of stuff. So this belief that I had to do what my parents said or, or, you know, listen to the opinions of others and like be weighed down by judgments that I perceived to be there, which arguably probably weren't, right? Those were the things that I had, that it gave me relief from. And then the day-to-day anxieties of like running a business and like, this person stole clients from you. And I'm like, when we die, it won't matter. It's okay. Like, we'll move on. Like, it's just not going to matter. And, you know, and for some people, and that's why I share it because there are probably other people who were in the same boat as me. And so, like, I'm just sharing it for those people. And if you're not one of those people, I love you and that's awesome.

Like, I'm so stoked for you that you believe what you believe. But if you're not one of those people, I do think that giving yourself the freedom to have whatever little M meaning you want out of the activities that you do is incredibly freeing because you get to, you get to do what you use. define as meaningful, which is great. I like that. Who do you look up to? Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are probably my two, like, heroes. Why? They've lived a life that I admire in a lot of ways.

I think that, like, and like my, my life goal was to be like King Solomon, just a wise man. and I feel like they are like modern day, you know, King Solomon, King Solomon's, in that they are wise, they accumulated a lot of wealth. And they did it living what I would consider, you know, Aristotle's like good life. They, you know, they, they, they did life their way. And I just have a tremendous amount of respect for that. And I have a lot of respect for Elon, you know, it's, I think it's more like the people that I look up to are people who are just authentically them and just do things their way. And so that is what I try to do.

And I think Nylism actually helped me do that a lot because I wasn't trying to get fit into a cookie cutter of like you have to do these things this way, just most more like, I'm going to do this my way, you know, and that comma and that's okay, period. And that was very freeing for me. And so I think those guys embody a lot of those traits. A really interesting thing that I read was a lot of us make heroes out of our own deficiencies. And so like the people that we look up to are the people that.

embody things that we wish we had. And so it's like being mindful of who you look up to is a great exercise and self-reflection. It's like why do I look up to these people? And it's probably because on some level, like I feel the most pressure of not being me. Right. And so like the pressures around like,

I mean I almost was in a hardcore religious person. Like I am very, you know, I don't want to say susceptible, like I am swayed by those things. And so making the decision to choose not to do that despite basically walking away from a community and all that stuff was very hard. But it felt right. And so,

to me. And so I feel confident in the decision. Who do you look up to, Jack? Yeah. You, Graham. Oh. I would say probably mainly just my parents, big idols of mine. Interesting.

Is it? Yeah. I mean, I think that's interesting. I think a lot of people don't look up with their parents. Because I think they live a perfect life. Wow. You know, I don't know. I just I really really admire them. They're great people. I love their philosophies and I think they're super nice

They're charitable. They're respectful good people. It's great. They got a nice house too. Oh That's what it really was. Oh yeah overlooks the beach Jack's trying to get on the will right now. I love you mom and dad. You guys the best seriously just make sure to put me untitled I love you way more than my brother. Yeah. So was the view. Yeah, it's the view. If we're going to talk, I guess like,

great driveway, nice feet. If we're talking like big figures. Great bones. Yeah, yeah. The house is good bones. I would say, I guess like, I really look, I like Elon Musk. I don't want to be one of those people that's just like the classic person that just like, idolizes Elon Musk, but he's, he's pretty awesome.

It's like saying, you know, like something that's awesome is like, I don't want to say it's awesome. It's like saying LeBron's not a good basketball player because everyone says LeBron's a good basketball. That's why I had no problem admitting that I like Elon because he's admirable. That more people admit it has nothing to do with his excellence. Yeah. Right. It's hard for me to look up to people that I don't know super well. Fair.

I suppose. Like it's easier if I know someone through and through. Like anytime I picture people I admire, it's mostly the first things that come to mind are people that I'm familiar with. You know, that's really interesting because I think it's like for me, like the entrepreneurial career path that I went on. It went from having mentors to heroes. And so mentors are people like as least decided to find that you have close proximity to kind of speak into your life. And I think as you continue to like, I'll say level up, but I say that loosely, just on the within the material success world, that's all I'm saying. There were, there were fewer and fewer people in my

close proximity that I was like, I look up to you because I feel like I've, I've, I already kind of hit some of these check marks. And so I think that you end up moving up to like finding your heroes. And then that's like Charlie Munger talks about this, where he has all these, all his best friends are dead because it's like Benjamin Franklin and the people that he consumed all their stuff because he, they became his mentors, right?

It's like, and so I think that that at least for me was a shift that I feel like has continued to reinforce itself over time as like the people I look up to are not in my life at all. but I still consume, like I've been tremendously impacted by Warren and Charlie, even though I don't know them. But you're saying like once you checked those boxes of the reasons why you looked up to these people, then you could no longer look up to them. Not look up to them, but like, I'm trying to be mindful of how I say this.

But like, I'll give a very quantitative example. If I'm looking up to somebody for, you know, their physique or something, right? And then I achieve the physique that I want, then it's not that I don't look up to them, but like I don't need more, like I have understood the lessons. I don't need more lessons on this path. Like I get it.

But what if it's not something like, like it's more like a mental thing, like you look up to them for their philosophies or just their overall well-being? Yeah, he understands the philosophies. He can check that off and really. Yeah. Well, so there's like that, I mean,

Richard Feynman talks about this where the point is not, to memorize. The point is to understand. It's like once you understand something, it becomes a part of you and you take it with you and you can apply it in a number of scenarios. And so if someone has something or a perspective that you don't have, the goal should just be to understand it so that you can take it with you. I actually really like that answer because I can relate a lot to that. Because when I look at people, like when I watched people, for example, on YouTube when I was learning, let's say photography, I didn't want to keep them as my mentor forever.

because then if I look up to somebody and I don't learn and I don't understand myself, then there will always be a deficit between my knowledge and their knowledge, if that makes sense. So I think it's always good to kind of want to understand things fully for yourself or, you know. And I think there's also a sequence to knowledge. So this is actually kind of interesting. So if you think about when you learned math, because it's a simple example, right? Like first you learned like simple addition and then you learned multiplication. And then when you went from your addition teacher, your arithmetic teacher to your multiplication teacher,

you weren't like, screw my arithmetic teacher. There was so much better stuff out there. Like, they were teaching me basics. It's like, well, you had to learn that to learn the next thing. Right. So it's not like I poo-poo them. It's just that, like, I no longer need that. I need the next building block.

And so I think that if you look at your life in those components of like maybe health and wealth and relationships and maybe spirituality, et cetera, like you can look up to people who have an understanding of the topic that is more in depth than your current understanding or has an understanding that you prefer to your understanding and then learn of them in that. And if someone just continues to have a more and more in depth understanding of it, which is why I think like the higher up you go in terms of like the people that you're looking at, the more, the deeper their knowledge is on the subject, which gives you a longer period of time to continue to look up them, right? And so, which is why it's natural that a lot of many people share the big public. heroes because those big public heroes have such a depth of knowledge compared to everyone else that they can stay public heroes because a lot of people never never surpass them or never fully understand what those people understand but like if you're close proximity you assimilate the lessons and knowledge and knowledge and perspective from them then like you expand your circle it seems from the the outside that you've already kind of like optimized everything you've you've I don't want to say you're set in your ways but you you're you're your conscious

confident in what you believe and what's optimal at this point. And what can you work on? And what's your biggest insecurity? Ooh. That's a good one. It's certainly not your hairline. No, certainly not. What are you talking about?

Lifting up your brim, I see that, man. Oh, man, my biggest insecurity. It's probably the dual-sided coin of ego and validation from others. I still am sensitive to the fact that, like, I know that it still drives me and I don't like that it does. And so it's just like, you know, just consistently trying to just peel back the amount that it influences my decision making processes. You know, like the simple example is the content example. It's like you make a video. You think it's awesome.

People think it sucks. And there's like two sides to that. One is like you want to serve a marketplace. So you have to understand that part of it. But the other part of is like, do I now suck? Right? Which is like, am I taking the performance of the thing? and then, you know, projecting it on myself.

And I think that I still have a tendency to do that more than I would, that I'd be happy, you know, about. Like, I would prefer to not do that. I prefer to take the feedback objectively as it is and have zero percent reflect back on me. But I don't, I'm not at zero percent. And so I think that's probably my, my biggest insecurity is the validation from others piece. I think I'm significantly better at it than I was, but I think it's still something that I want to work on. Who do you seek validation from?

Oh, it's just like the unwashed, you know, just the masses overall. Yeah. And as a quick rerun on the point that you were making earlier, like, I think I've inherited a lot of the character traits, not inherited, but like actively tried to ascribe to a lot of the character traits like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. And I think a lot of that is because like when I look at old people, they have really good perspectives on things. And most of them don't care about most things because they realize that life is short.

And so I'm trying to live my life as an old man. for a longer period of time rather than waiting until I'm 70 to realize that it doesn't matter and I'm going to die. It's just that I think once people get older and their death is looming, that they, like, their priorities become much clearer. And the, the, the, I think inanities is the right word. Anantities of life become irrelevant, right? It's just like, who cares? Like, that doesn't matter. Like, because life is literally too short for them.

Like, they literally don't have time for that. And so trying to kind of project that into the present. and trying to use an old man's wisdom in a young man's life is kind of my, my goal. But then what about a skill or something that you want to work on that you don't yet have? I feel like, so I talk about this on my channel a lot, but there's three things that limit an entrepreneur, right? There's skills, there's character traits, and there's beliefs. And so the beliefs are some of the hardest ones because you're not aware of them, because you believe them, right? We question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe in those who never think,

question, right? And so those are the three things in terms of improvement. So it's not necessarily just skills. It's also like traits and beliefs. I think that from a skill perspective, when I look at leverage a vehicle, I don't, I don't feel comfortable raising funds from other people. And I think that would be, that would probably be the next natural piece to my business career would be having some sort of fund structure for like the investments that we're doing because we're obviously getting very good returns on them. I just, there's part of me that I can see

the value in the fund structure and having, you know, helping other people participate in us, you know, allowing us to do more deals, bigger deals, et cetera. But there is a certain amount of autonomy that I enjoy having, not reporting to anyone. And so I wouldn't want the investors to become a new boss because that I know I would not like. And so I'd have to structure the right way.

But anyways, I think that, That is probably a skill deficiency that I currently have, at least an in-depth understanding of capital markets from like the fundraising side. That's probably the skill that I need to work on the most in the probably three to five-year horizon. Alex, you should ask some questions. Yeah. Some of what you disagree with about what I said, Alex. Yeah.

You want me to disagree with more of your points? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, sure. I don't know because I don't think. Give us some either issues, problems or things in your life, Alex, that you want to work on or that you want to improve. My whole life is a problem, Graham. We didn't do any of that.

Oh, let's talk about that. You know what, Graham, that is a problem in my life. Let's talk about that. So, as you guys can tell by looking at me, you know, I'm not the peak of physical fitness. Okay. But that is definitely a problem in my life that I think that I've neglected. And I think that I could definitely use, like, a lot of work on. And there's a lot of aspects to it.

but Alex, how do you do it, you know, to just conquer? Because, I mean, look at you, man. You're pretty. It's true. I noticed to say the jack-wonging is like, is that a tighter shirt? No, I just worked out this morning. And I'm thinking the same thing. It's incredible.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. That's what I do it for. For that validation. It would just tear apart. It would rip it, yeah. It's stretchy.

That's the key, right? That's the key. Gosh. this is a good question because I mean I did this I dedicated the first half of my professional career to this and I would say that the nice thing is that the fitness weight loss thing is a is a question that that has a lot of roots that that can apply to other things it can apply to personal finance it can apply to fitness it can apply to marriage like the concepts of how you fix it are the same and so I would say I would ask you a question back which is Alex what do you think you should do Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Sultz whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero?

More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, if you wanted to be better than you are right now, what would you do? in regards to fitness? Sure. I already know what to do, I guess. Right. Yeah.

And so the real question is not, what do I need to do? Because you already know what to do. The question is, why aren't you doing it? Yeah. So how do I answer that question? Because I mean, like, I was talking to Graham about this the other day, and I'm going to get a really personal here, guys. You know, I told Graham that at the weight that I met, and luckily, I'm comfortable

to talk about this. So please don't hold back. Um, I feel like, and, and I might be putting myself in a box here and I hate to do this, but I'm speaking openly. Mm-hmm. I feel like at my weight, you don't get to my weight by having like a small problem, right? Mm-hmm. I think there's some sort of like, um, emotional problem, whether it's like, like, something like a, either in a addiction to food or like some sort of like. How much, how much, how much, how much, how much do you wait right now if you're comfortable saying it?

Um, I can tell you guys, but I don't, if it's okay, we can remove it from the podcast. I'll ask you a better question. Okay. Why aren't you 200 pounds heavier? Probably because I can't eat that much. So you do know how to stop. Yes, I believe so. So here's what's interesting.

You do know how to stop. It's just that you're stopping. You don't have an issue. You just stop at the wrong point. So it's not like I can't stop, but you can stop because otherwise you'd be 200 pounds heavier. Can you explain that a little more? So a lot of people were like,

I have an issue, you know, I'm binging I can't stop eating once I start, et cetera. It's like, okay, well, then why aren't you twice as big? Well, I can't eat that much. Cool. Okay. So you do know how to stop. We just need to shift when you stop. Right. But that's like, again, that's only to break that belief.

The real real is, is becoming rather than thinking about the doing. Right. So you've probably heard the B do have. Right. Like you have to be a certain type, like habits and how we create our identities are, are self-reinforcing, right? We do certain things, and because we do those things, we believe certain things about ourselves, right?

And because we believe certain things about ourselves, we do certain things, right? And so it's a constant reinforcement loop. And so, like, one of the telltale signs of somebody who's not going to be successful is like, oh, I'm trying to lose weight. It's like, no, that's not, because, like, they've already identified themselves

as somebody who's not going to lose weight. And so we just need to wait for them to fail, right? Because they're already, they already are saying, this is outside of myself, I have to push myself to get there. Rather than thinking, like, I'm, I want to be. become a healthy person. And so when you are confronting the many hundreds of decisions that you have every day, rather than trying to zone in on the super tactical of like, I have to weigh this

and I have to count this and whatever, it's just simply like, what would a healthy person do in the scenario? Like at every point, just like, what would a healthy person do? It's like they would do this. Like, okay. And the thing is, is like, you're not trying to be necessarily right. You just want to be less wrong than you are right now. Yeah, that makes sense. I think maybe that's where I kind of had a downfall because there was a point where I did commit to weight loss and I made I in my head I guess I wasn't right but in my head I committed that you know this is a lifestyle change right it's with me for the whole life and I lost 45 pounds which you know for me that was a lot but for some reason and it was all that was in my head like every day when I would wake up you know I would be it was

be like a conscious like choice of like what I was eating, blah, blah, blah. You know, and, and, but the, but the thing is it became so, I don't want to say, I don't know if it was toxic, but it became so, I'm going to use the word toxic that, like, that's all I thought about in my head. And I don't know how to go back there without doing that again, because it was so, that part was so detrimental to, to my health, but obviously so is eating. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

they're both bad. But the thing is, is like, I think you can take us a season and not project it forever, right? So it's just for now, you will have this kind of obsession around eating food. And that's okay because you're making a behavior change, right? Like,

it's good that it's at the front of your mind. It's like that is what is creating the change. After you do that for a year or two years or three years, it will stop being as important because you'll do it without thinking about it. And then it's not going to be a thing. but most people who have like really exceptional physiques, we're obsessed with it for a period of time. Most people have exceptional marriages.

We're obsessed with it for a period of time. People have really good personal finances. We're obsessed with it for a period of time. And then there's just so many things that like you don't even think about. Or like, well, of course I use whatever, you know, apps use. Like, of course I don't go out to, I don't get appetizers when we got. Of course I don't buy name brand stuff. Like it's just obviously.

But when in the beginning, you have to put active attention because it's not normal. The goal is just to get the activity. that you're doing to become kind of unconscious competence, which is like you're doing them without thinking about them so they don't actually take willpower because it's just how you've always done it. But you have to get through the part where it's not how you've always done it. And so you have to allocate more attention to it. So I don't like judging yourself on the fact that it was quote obsessive is like,

so what? But I think it's the toxic, it's the mentality, Alex, right? So why was that, why was that toxic for you? Like what made that that impactful? Like it was literally distracting me from my work like I would sit there and I would be working and all I can think about was like Okay like at 5 p.m. I'm like I obsessed with the numbers like I knew like and and this is good. I think it's important to know this Like I knew how many meals or how much how many calories the next meal I was eating at what time like how many calories I have left for the day

Because I was so focused on trying to be in a caloric deficit which is is obviously like the key to losing weight. But like I would be working and I would just think about it. And then it would like pull me out of my work. And you know like like Alex said, I mean maybe it was a good thing. But. And then eventually it just, you know, I stopped following what I was doing, which I, in hindsight, obviously I wish I didn't.

But that's why it became, I think, a problem for me, Graham. But, yeah, Alex, wouldn't you say it's better, this Alex, to find the root cause of the issue, like to go deeper and say, this is why I, you know, I'm eating a certain way. This is what maybe caused it and solving that underlying issue would kind of help everything else rather than just focus on the surface level. Calories in, calories out. Yeah, I hear what you're saying with the question. I think that I think a lot of us because if we have a big problem

we want to find a big root cause and sometimes it's not and I think that we have to give ourselves permission for like maybe just food tastes good and like we're evolutionarily designed to like have a super stimuli when something is salty and fatty and sweet at the same time and so like we've gotten very good at pushing our own buttons

and so like just saying like yeah this is not because like in some ways it becomes this like huge beast that I have to defeat when we said like this this huge emotional issue and I had my kid my parents and when I was kid and I would eat ice cream and that's how I felt good. Like you tell yourself these stories, but I don't know how useful it is because then it just exaggerates the size of the problem rather than just saying like I am going to be a healthy person and make decisions that are in accordance with that and a healthy person if they ate out

once wouldn't be like, oh, I guess I'm not a healthy person anymore. They would just do better. they would just go back to normal the next day. And so, like, you can start whenever, as long as you start changing how you identify yourself. And I think that's just like, that's the root of this stuff is like, how do you identify yourself? And then you act in accordance with that identity. Like, if you are always like, I've just always struggled with my weight, well, that's what you identify with. And so you're just going to reinforce that identity.

So we have to switch that. There's a great book on this. James Clear Talk. It's Atomic Habits. Really good. But you're going to live in accordance with that. And so you have to stop saying, like you have to stop identifying with the things that are not serving you. I mean, I agree.

I just, I don't know. I don't know what to say. What's holding you back, Alex? Gosh, we're going deep. I really don't know, to be honest with you. Why wouldn't you start today? There's no reason. So we could do that.

I mean, there's nothing. But there was nothing holding me back yesterday or the day before. Well, just a decision. Yeah, exactly. So you can make the decision whenever you want. Yes, but I think it's a hard decision, I guess. Why wouldn't you do it today? There's literally no reason.

Well, there is a reason because you're not doing it. So why wouldn't you do it? Why are you not doing this right now? Because there's literally no reason. Well, maybe there is, like you said, but there's none that I can. No, I think the reason would be that Alex feels like he could do it at any time. So why start today? because I think it's easier to start next week or the week after.

And I know this because I'm very much the same way. You know what? Yeah, I agree with that because I feel like it's my choice. But then that's so stupid because when I'm now sitting here, I'm like, well, I also had the choice to start it a year ago. Right. So. Isn't it? Doesn't it get to the point where all of a sudden the pain exceeds the pleasure? And I don't think Alex has gotten to a point yet where it's, it's painful.

It's maybe uncomfortable. but I think starting now is more uncomfortable than just... You might have to get bigger. What? Yeah, you might have to get bigger. Oh, God. To get there. Like, because, I mean, at the end of the day, like, you just have to hit your version of rock bottom.

You know what I mean? For me, like, my version of rock bottom is like 15% body fat. And so, like, for me, I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I look at myself and I'm like, ugh, just you piece of shit. Come on. Don't eat like an asshole. You know, and then I got my shit together. And so, like, the only different things,

like between how people look is just where they draw the line to where they feel like an asshole. Like that's it. Like all you're doing is just like saying, you know, like I feel like an asshole if I have above, you know, 10% body fat. There's tons of people who live there. There's some people who are like that line is 20%. That line is 30%.

But what's crazy is that like once you find maintenance, you just maintain the same way. So it's like for me, I'd think like, why would you not maintain it good rather than maintaining at normal? Because like all you have to do is get there once and then you just maintain it. So anyways, there's, you know, Alex's perspective.

But that's also because I came from, somebody who really wanted outside validation. And so the easiest and first place to start for me was my body. So I started lifting when I was 13 years old. So I'm like almost 20 years in this game in terms of like the lifting and health and stuff. And so for me, this is not like we had we talked about at dinner last night. It's like this is not in any way time consuming for me mentally because like I am a healthy person and I do these things because that is who I am.

And so it is not very difficult for me. It's just difficult for people to make the change. And I know the quote you were saying, which is, you know, change occurs when the pain of staying the same. Sorry, the pain of change. Pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change. Correct. Right.

And so it's like if your current existence hurts more than the discomfort that you will go through, then you will go through the new discomfort to get out of the current pain. Right. You know? And so for me, I would like, you know what I mean? Like there's a million ways you can do it. And that's why when you say like the root issue, it's like there's lots of tiny cues in Alex's environment that reinforces current behavior.

It's not one thing. It's like, what's in the pantry? and he walks in the door, like, just like all of these tiny little things. So, like, you can change someone's environment. And I'll tell you an interesting one that I actually read in James Clear's book. But so heroin's very hard to get off of. And that's a statement of belief, but I'll just, just bear with me. In Vietnam, I think it was 15% and then later they thought it was 20% of guys who went there tried heroin.

Insane. Like, that's an insane statistic. And what was interesting about that, is that when those Vietnamese now became veterans and came back, 90% of them never did it again. And the reverse statistic is true of, like, U.S.-based addiction programs, right? 90% of people do heroin again after they leave the program. So how can you have the most addictive substance, right? And you've got a 90% success rate in one incident,

and then you've got like a 90% failure rate in the other. And this one wasn't even a program, and this one was, right? And so what happens is people, if you can pull someone out of the environment entirely, it's actually much easier to do because it's like you hang out with certain people and they reinforce those behaviors.

You have cues in your environment that you've associated with, which reinforce the behaviors. And so like if you really went all in on something like this, and you could apply this to any type of behavior, whether it was drugs or food or whatever, is like honestly just changing everything about your life and then starting for scratch is like,

I'm making these big changes, I'm burning the boats, I'm being this person and I will make these choices as a result of this in accordance with that is sometimes the best way to do it is like clean slate, but that might sound like a lot of change. And so you can also just not do any of that stuff and just eat less. But it's just tackling the big issue, which is like why you don't care. I'd say one of the biggest things like you guys are saying where the, what is it, the discomfort of the environment is so bad that it forces change.

and the discomfort of going through it is easier. I will say, I mean, I've, I've had situations where, like, I go, like, going on a plane for me, terrible experience, right? I mean, you know, like, you know, just stuff like, like, my wife probably wants to go parasailing if we go on vacation. I probably can't do that, you know? And it's just like, I feel like there's a lot of, like, life that I'm. missing out on. And I've thought about it so deeply that I mean, I've, I've cried about it before. Yeah. But apparently, like, it's not hard enough to change me. But I don't know if I need to hit rock bottom for, like, me to make a change. That's great. That's a great statement because it is a good

statement of belief to say, I don't need to hit rock bottom to make a change. I agree with that. I think that is a belief that serves you. Yeah. And so I just, I don't know how to just click it. Like, I really don't. Well, you just. just start. That's all. There's no like there's nothing complex about it. You just start. You go home, you take away the stuff that you eat that's not good. That's it. At the end of the day, you've got to be ready, and we're not going to talk you into it. Right. Like if, if, if you not being able to live half of the life, um, is not sufficient, then you got to find something that is. You know, um, a good friend of mine ran a super marathon and it was like extremely difficult for him.

and he said, I think on social media, he was like, I just had a big bag of whys. So he didn't just have one Y. He had to have a huge bag of just like you just pull out Y after Y after Y after Y after to keep him going through this thing. And so like maybe you don't need one Y. Maybe you need a lot of Wyes. You know, maybe you don't have enough Wyes. Do you need enough wise?

I mean, at the end of the day, like this, this change is yours, you know. You've got to make it. And it's when it's when the reality of the condition is real for you. like it breaks my heart it really does i mean that like in the most sincere way um my mother was super overweight my whole life and she just recently in the last two years she's now in her 60s like my whole life super overweight like morbidly obese in the last two years and for me that might be my you know an easy why for me is like i don't want to live that easy boom i don't need like not even a thought to me right but when her physician and mind you my mother is a physician

So like crazy, right? It was only one her physician after, you know, she tried all these diets for whatever. It was when she was like, you're not going to see your grandkids. Like, zero percent chance. It's not going to happen. You're not going to see them. You're going to die before that. Like, there's no question.

And it was only in that moment that she decided to really do it. And she always knew what to do. Eat less. Walk more. Like it's not like it's not rocket science, right? But for her, that was enough that whenever she was confronted with decision because you have 100 microdecisions that. happen every day. Am I going to take the stairs? I'm not going to take this? I'm going to walk.

Am I not to do it? Am I going to grab this extra bag or not? Right? Or whatever it is. And so I think it's like if you have that at the root, you'll be able to make the change. And then that will get you through the discomfort phase so that you can change your identity. And I love this. Again, I read this in the Atomic House book, which is really good. But if you look at identity, it's the root of two words. You've got entity. There's the Latin version of it, but basically being. And then you've identical, right, which is repeated. And so, like, identity is literally repeated being is what we repeatedly do is who we are. And like when you describe somebody, you're like, he's the type person who X, Y, and Z's, right? Like, that's their, that's how we even describe

identity is what people do. And so the nice thing is that you don't win the vote of identity all at once. It's just one vote at a time. And the beautiful thing is that you can just be like 51%, just like a vote. Like, if you just do a little more, you win, you don't have to be perfect. you just have to do more than you do bad. And if you do that for a long enough period of time, like it will continue to reinforce itself. And so a lot of people have a binary vision of like what, quote, perfect health style of them looks like.

And that's silly and it's a farce. And it'd be like trying to pretend like you're going to be a perfect human. It's not going to happen. Right. But like you could also redefine healthy as just somebody who like just doesn't binge. You know what I mean? Or like just like you already know the stuff. So like there's no point even getting in the tactics of this because it's just behavior change.

And so I probably went too deep on that. But it breaks my heart. But it has to break your heart. Yeah, I think for me, okay, so yeah, some people have different reasons for why they're not currently doing it, right? For me, I have the knowledge, right? I research into what I need to do, blah, blah, blah. I'm like in my head, to be honest, I'm ready to make the change. But the one thing I think that is holding me back, the more I think about it is like the,

the the feeling of like I don't know how to describe it other than like imposter syndrome right like what really and maybe this is just stemming from like confidence issues what really makes me think that I can do this like and I think that that is what like is my biggest turtle probably and I don't know how to overcome that here's something cool you don't need to be confident to do this because your calories don't care if you're confident yeah but for you no calories don't care if confident or you're confident or anyone's confident. Callers do not care. No, I understand. No, I understand that. But like, I mean in my head, I need to be, like, confident about it to follow. But that's a statement. Alex thinks it's going to fail. So why try

because I'm going to fail? That's that. But it's one of those things where you can't let the past burn you twice, right? Which is like if you failed in the past, if you project that failure into the present, then that past failure continues to repeat itself by you don't even trying. It's like if we're looking at a kid who's who's walking, right? And they fall. We're not like, I think it's just going to be a crawler. You know, like we don't say that, right? But like right now you're applying that same, like you say so much worse things to yourself when it's like if you failed, so what? It's like it's a process.

You're going to learn to walk. You'll learn to walk eventually as long as you don't stop. That's true. So basically what you're saying is if I'm not trying and fail, like even if I'm like trying and failing, it basically is better than just sitting here and being like, Well, I'm not going to start because I'm going to fail. And just like getting better. Why don't we say this?

When don't we say, yes, you're going to fail. Expect failure. It's like starting a business. Of course you're going to fail. That is part of the game. But saying that you fall, like that you stop doing something versus failing are two very different things. You're defining failure as you. If you eat a pizza one day, right?

But then the other rest of the week, you're fine. Did you fail? No. Right. So it's like we just need to read it. Like it's, we just need to strip away the perfection and get to the like if I directionally move in this way over a long enough period of time, I will get there as long as I don't stop. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in demand fields like soft. software development and information technology. Learn more at about amazon.ca. That was great.

Yeah. That was a good point. Yeah, everything that you're saying is, is great. I mean, it's for some reason it's just stuff that like, I don't. It's not sticking about. I don't, I don't think about it. To be frank. You'd have to pull this thread.

And I don't necessarily know that we have the time to do it on this podcast. But like, you have to figure out why your, your gut instinct was to say, eating healthy was bad. Like that's basically like if I were to make this, boil this down into simple terms, you're like, I started eating healthy and I decided it was bad. So it's figuring out why you made that experience bad in your head

and figuring out like, because there's probably other things that eating does for you. It probably relieves stress, right? So it's like great. And the nice thing is that there's lots of cues for stress in our lives. So you have a number of cues that trigger the behavior. So it's not just one. it's like you can get stressed for resilient things and then have a really easy because like like habits are created for like mental shortcuts so we don't have to make decisions and so it's like I feel stressed I can resolve this immediately with this thing I don't even think about it you're just starting to walk towards the fridge when you feel stressed right and so to break this like man we're going to get way too deep into behavior stuff so I'll just I'll cut it at this which is you got to figure out why you're not why you didn't start yesterday and there's a reason that you have and you need to name the reason and it's a reason and it's a reason and it's

may be ridiculous. But like, some people are like, it's just not convenient. Cool. Then make it convenient. And then all of a sudden, like, it's sometimes it's the tiniest thing. Like, I'll tell you this tiny example, which is I try and put face cream on every night before I go to bed. It's like, one of the habits that I really was like, I'm going to try and do this, right?

And when our, the maids come, sounds ridiculous. When the maids come to clean our place, I have like my bedside set up. And then they take all my stuff that's like right next to me. And then they like move it along the back line of the bedside. table. So like the cream's like over a box and like it's hard to reach and when I'm in bed, I can't reach it. And after that and I had to realize it because I was like I'd get on a good routine and then like two or three days in I would stop doing it. And then I realized the only reason I stopped doing it was because I didn't see the cream. And if I did remember the cream,

it was like I would have to get out of bed to go grab it and then put it back. And so I had to tell the maids leave them along the side and don't move them. It's the tiny like these tiny things just like I had a visual cue and it made it more difficult. So I removed the visual cue because it was further away. And then it got harder rather than making it easier and making it obvious. I think I have an answer for you actually. Okay. So the only reason that I thought about food all day in my quote unquote tossing behavior is because I was hungry.

Yeah, this sounds stupid. No, you're not. You're not. You're bored. If you could eat a chicken breast, like if like, oh, man, I could go for a chicken breast, you're hungry. If you're like, oh, I could like go for a snack, you're bored. I don't know. It felt like hunger.

Yeah, of course. You don't know the difference. Yeah, I don't know the difference. You learn the difference. When you're really hungry, you're like, chicken sounds great. Like an apple sounds delicious. You know what I mean? But like when you're bored, you're like, I could go for some chips.

You know what I mean? Like if you could go for a chicken breast that's dry with no sauce, that's when you're hungry. I think you're 100%. You probably haven't. You know what I'm thinking about it. Guys, I know this sounds so... You're right. It sounds stupid.

It sounds so stupid. But, like, in my head, right? Yeah. Until you said that, I was convinced that I was hungry all the time. But now that you said that, I don't think I was hungry. And I know that sounds stupid. You guys are, like, probably... You guys are probably laughing.

I swear to... I swear to whatever you believe in. Yeah. A lot of the times where I'm just like, a little snack, it's, you know, the dead space where you would normally reach for... for your phone. It's like, well, I may as well as eat a quick snack. Alex, you haven't been hungry in years.

What are you trying to say about that? I'm saying that you've been overfeeding for a very long period of time. And so you have such a surplus and stores that your body can take from for a very long period of time. Yeah, I agree with you. I think I just had like an epiphany. I think I don't know. This is so crazy. I think I don't know the difference between being hungry and being bored bored.

I know that sounds stupid. No, it's fine. I think very few people know the difference between them. Even me, I don't know. But then, okay, if you don't know the difference, then why don't you look like me, Graham? What's up? If you don't know the difference, then why don't you look like me? You're pretty physically active.

Yeah, I've been going to the gym quite a lot. But I always caught my default is probably eating healthy, but until I've started tracking calories, I've realized that I've eaten more than I've expected. But my default is still eat healthy, eat small portions, but without tracking it, I eat more than I think I do. I just want to thank you for your time. I didn't mean to bring you on the podcast and, like, bombard you with my physical physique questions or anything. But I'm sure there are other people who are listening who are, you could replace this with alcohol. You could replace this with, you know, whatever.

It's the same thing. My mind is just blown right now. Like I feel like now I feel like I could do it. And I just want to just reinforce this one point, which is just because you are hungry does not mean you need to eat. So you used being hungry as a justification for eating. You can be hungry and not eat. You can be horny and not have sex with somebody who's not your wife.

So just because you have a feeling doesn't mean you need to take action on it. Right. So first we had to delineate between the fact that most of the time you're bored are not actually hungry. But even if you are hungry, that doesn't give you permission to then go eat. Because if you diet, you will be hungry. hungry actually and a chicken breast will sound good so it doesn't necessarily mean that you have permission to eat outside of what you think you need to hit for your for your calorie intake is it just like a mental thing at that point like I you already know the calorie stuff there's

no point in getting into that like you're like if you really want to do it you already know like you Google it you know you need to eat less than you are right now and you would just do that sick is it just reminding yourself that like like you you know how much you're supposed to eat and just say I have enough to live it's just my body telling you could you could right now literally drink water and take a multivitam for a year and be fine. There's no way. 100%, promise you. They've already done studies on this. You can absolutely do it.

I mean, I'm not going to, but... That's fine. Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying, like, you have more than enough stores to last you for a very long time. So, like, the only thing you're doing to eat is just like you're just moving things through your system, but like, that's it. Like, they've done starvation studies and, like, your... Your basic metabolic rate goes down, but not by... I mean, it goes down by 30%, which is something, but it's not... massive and you're still going to have a high business metabolic rate overall because you have more of you to feed and maintain. Like fat takes calories to keep alive. Like you have fat on you,

but it still requires blood and nutrients to stay alive, right? To like not, you know, become dead tissue. So like in a lot of ways, it's easiest to lose weight when you are bigger. So you can keep saying that as your as your refrain. It's like, I am bigger, which means it should be easier for me to lose weight because it is. Yeah. I don't want to later on this too long because I think we've gone long enough. But I seriously, I want to thank you. You bet. Today the day, Alex?

I think so, but I, you kind of scared. Yes or no. Yes, it is. He kind of scared me with the like you're going to be real hungry. I'm just like, oh, but you know what? I'm, I think I've just been eating because I'm bored. And I know people are going to think. think this is stupid like Alex of course you're eating when you were bored but to me I'm telling

you guys like I truly felt hungry like in my head that was hunger and I thinking back I don't think that was just distract yourself and that was kind of stupid so yeah you shouldn't be bored at work Alex that's the real issue but we'll we'll talk about that after the podcast oh yeah I'm kidding no we're good thank you no you bet you bet it's a blast to have you on man I was really looking forward to this. Yeah. Even going out to dinner last night. And I genuinely enjoy hanging out, but it's listening to you talk.

I learned so much. And more than just like a friendship, but also just the fact that like I feel like I am like the student of so many things and like just being exposed to different thoughts and a different way of thinking. and a different structure is very few podcasts afterwards do I just like just want to be alone? And this is always one of them because I have so much to think about after we end this. I appreciate it.

And thank you guys for having me on. I think it's chunking down and chunking up in terms of like thought process, which is like, why are we doing this? And I think that's just been the core of it. It's just like, why am I bothering to do this? Why does this matter? matter. And so, you know, it does go back to my worldview because it does shape. It is the,

it is the seed that kind of like has borne all the fruit of the other things that I have. It's just like, why am I choosing to, like, because it is an active choice. And, um, and so, you know, I'm glad that the, the thoughts that I've had have been at least thought provoking because they, they took me a long period of time to figure out on my own. And I think they're, you know, they can be unique to different people. But for me that this set of beliefs has served me well. Yeah. And so, I continue to believe them. How about this? Usually at this point, I'll ask the audience,

hey, make sure to subscribe and hit the like button. But how about this? Instead of subscribing here, and maybe let me speak first, Jack, and then you could ask them to subscribe. You're almost at 200,000 subscribers. I'll link to the channel down below the description. If you've enjoyed listening to two hours of Alex talk, your channel is in the description.

If we could get you past 200,000 subscribers, So like if you're watching this basically, and you have a spare three seconds to go in the description, it'll be one of the top links and just subscribe. Not the top link. One of the top link. It'll be the third link. Maybe third. Maybe third.

It's in the description. Yeah. Takes you a quick second. Just find that link, edit, and subscribe to Alex's channel. And that's it. And that would mean a lot to me as just a thank you for coming on. And if you've enjoyed, if you haven't enjoyed this, you don't have to do that. But if you've enjoyed it and it's free, we mean a lot.

That's a great call to action. All right, my turn. So guys, make sure, you know, if you've made it this far in the episode, you guys have enjoyed it. Send a text to your parents or your guardian or someone you care about that you care about them and you love them. How about this? We set up a submission form now. So we're going to have a submission form in the description. Right below where you could get a free stock all the way to $1,000.

but now you can submit because we never had a good submittal form you could go through that form if you want to be on the iced coffee hour and you feel like you have an interesting story to tell or something unique you could bring to the table the link is down below in the description so thank you guys so much for watching thank you for coming on and see the next time

appreciate it thank you guys thank you I gotta go pee again