The Rich Roll Podcast - The Minimalists: Less Is Now

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

How might your life be better with less? Not so many years ago, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus were mired in the corporate grind, banking six-figure salaries in pursuit of the American Dream. Expiating for the satisfaction their careers failed to provide, they did what most humans would: They bought stuff. Lots of stuff. When that didn’t work, they bought more. And when that didn’t work, they hit bottom. What came next was a search for meaning that would forever alter the trajectory of their lives—and ignite the spread of minimalism across the world. Known today as The Minimalists, Joshua and Ryan advocate for the pursuit of living less materially and more deliberately. Through their website, books, podcasts and films, they share practical, experience-based insights on how minimalism can lead to freedom—providing the foundation for a life built not on consumption, but instead on conscious purpose and mindful intention. With a devoted readership in the millions, they’ve written several books, given TED Talks and spoken at places like SXSW and Harvard Business School. They’ve been featured on every major television network and profiled in major publications like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and TIME. In 2016, Ryan and Joshua made an unexpected splash when their Netflix documentary Minimalism enervated audiences around the world. Now they’re back with a brand new, must-see follow up, Less Is Now. Given what these fine young gentlemen represent, I will restrain inclinations verbose to simply say that this is a conversation about how to live with greater intention and purpose. It’s about creating more by consuming less. It’s about prioritizing experience over accumulation. It’s about growth, contentment and love. And it’s about the deep personal satisfaction that comes with contributing beyond ourselves. In other words, minimalism isn’t martyrdom—it’s freedom. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll577 YouTube: bit.ly/theminimalists577 Joshua, Ryan and their message is a gift. Receive it graciously. Then put it to work. Peace + Plants, Rich

I think what's happening right now is Ryan and I for the last decade have been asking this question, what is essential? And now a lot more people are all of a sudden asking. In fact, the term's even out there, essential worker, right? But what is essential in my home? What is essential in my life? What is essential on my calendar? What is essential? And that's what I hope to illuminate with this film, how people ask that question, what is essential? And that's what I hope to illuminate with this film, how people ask that question, what is essential? Minimalism is not about owning nothing. It's just about breaking free from that attachment. You can turn your life around on a dime when you have the power to let go of anything in your life. We all have the opportunity though to restart our lives, to start over. And this film

was about starting over with less. And that can be less stuff, but it can also be less distractions, fewer commitments, et cetera. It's about starting over. I mean, is this film for every single person? I think every single person will get something out of it. But I think who it's going to help the most is someone who's in a situation right now

and they need some emotional leverage to start over. I think this film will help them do that. Hey everybody, I'm Joshua Fields-Milburn. And I'm Ryan Nicodemus. And together we are The Minimalists and we are here on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.

Good news, Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, aka The Minimalists, are here in the house for a powerful powwow on how to live better with less. Given that, a verbose introduction feels a little inappropriate. It would be weird, right? Anyway, I will say that I've known both these guys for years. I love them.

I have so much respect for their work, their mission of empowerment. And this conversation, which is coming up, is really stellar and potentially even life-altering. But first. and potentially even life-altering. But first... We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you.

I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, the minimalists. So these guys, Ryan and Joshua, are the dynamic duo behind a slew of books, a very popular blog and podcast called, as you might suspect, The Minimalists,

where they write and talk about living a meaningful life with less stuff. The entry point into these guys' world for most people, including me, was their 2016 hit Netflix documentary Minimalism, which is a fantastic watch directed by Matt D'Avella, who's gone on to become a good friend and a massive creator on YouTube. In any event, now the trio is back with a great new follow-up Netflix doc called Less Is Now. So this is a conversation about all things, minimalism of course, and how to live more deliberately. It's about creating more by consuming less.

It's about prioritizing experience over accumulation. It's about growth, contentment, love, and it's about the deep personal satisfaction that comes with contributing beyond ourselves. This is all a long way of saying that minimalism isn't about martyrdom. Instead, it's about freedom. So here we go.

This is me, Joshua Fields Milburn, and Ryan Nicodemus. What's up, guys. What's up guys? What's up? This is a long time in the making. Yeah. It's good to have you here. Great to see both of you. Good to be had.

Joshua's hair is looking perfect as always. Always. You know, Joshua gets a lot of attention for his hair and this whole Christopher Walken thing, but not enough attention is paid to your hair. You have excellent hair. I'm sort of in between you guys. I cut my hair.

I had long hair like yours, but you're looking fabulous today as well. Thanks man. I felt like I was having a bad hair day today. So that really uplifts my spirit. It's all good, man. It's all good. People who've been on this podcast journey for a while

will likely remember a podcast that I did with Joshua way back in the day, but Ryan, this is your first time here. I was boycotting you at the time. Yeah, I don't know what was going on between us, but we worked it out. You guys have been gracious enough to host me on your show several times and I'm delighted to have you here

on the eve of your new documentary coming out. Thanks so much. It's exciting, man. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's cool. It's exciting, man. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's cool. Be here too, man. Your story is well told, but I think it would be good to at least contextualize everything we're gonna talk about

by sharing your personal stories. And also in particular, Ryan, since yours, you haven't had an opportunity to share yours here. So how do we launch into that? What's the best place to start? Should we start at the beginning with you guys? 1981. Fifth grade best friends.

Yeah, I think we should start with Josh. Two pudgy kids sitting in the corner. Yeah, exactly. Plotting world domination. That's not far from the truth, except the world domination part. It was more like, you're working your way towards it.

The suburbs of Dayton domination. Right. And yeah. We're working your way towards it. The suburbs of Dayton domination. Right. And yeah. We're working our way towards it. How many kids from Dayton have documentaries on Netflix? I mean, the Wright brothers. Yeah. Wright brothers.

Okay, all right. So there's now- Who's the other, Martin Sheen, he is from- I don't think he's a doc though. No, he might be in a documentary. Right. Here's where we start, I think. I'll tee it up.

So Ryan and I grew up really poor in Dayton, Ohio. We've known each other, as you said, since we were fat little fifth graders. And literally I was the fattest kid in school. Ryan was the second fattest kid in school. It's so hard to believe, but when you watch the documentary, you're like, wow, he was telling the truth.

Yeah, I mean, it was impressive or depressive. Anyway, we knew each other, we grew up really poor, dysfunctional homes, before that term dysfunctional was in vogue. And we were pretty discontented growing up. And of course we thought, well, how do we become happy? And of course that was make money. And so we climbed the corporate ladder throughout our 20s

and had ostensibly successful careers. But of course we weren't successful. We were overwhelmed and stressed and sort of discontented by the lives we created. And what's fascinating now, Ryan, is the life we were living growing up, it was so chaotic. We traded that chaos just for a different type of chaos. Controlled chaos is still chaos, right?

In fact, it's an oxymoron. And so, yeah, we were working in corporate America, making really good money, spending even better money. And so had massive amounts of debt and knew we needed to make a change. Well, yeah, I mean, you both grew up in alcoholic households essentially, right? Food stamps, poverty.

So it's not surprising that you would seek out security and an upward kind of financially secure trajectory. I mean, that's what, you know, most people would do trying to emerge out of a situation like that. Yeah. I just, I remember working for my dad just out of high school.

He just had like small painting and wallpaper company and he worked his butt off and like he made nothing. And now I was there working my butt off making nothing. And I'm like, I know there's a way I can work just as hard, but make more money. And that's when I went into telecom with Josh. And yeah, like he said, I started making really awesome money.

And I thought, oh, I figured it out. I finally figured it out. I remember, cause even during like high school, I worked for my dad painting and hanging wallpaper. And I remember early on when I was working for him, we were in this really nice house. It wasn't like a mansion or anything, but it was like something nicer than my mom

or dad had ever owned. And I looked at my dad, I'm like, this is a really nice place, man. Like how much do I need to make in order to live here? And he's like, if you can make $50,000 a year, you could probably afford a place like this. So for me, that was like, yeah, that was the number for happiness. It was 50 grand a year. And when I went to the telecom company, I think that very first year I made like 52,000 or something. And I was really proud of myself and like happy that I was making more money.

I went out and like, you know, bought a new truck. I guess it wasn't technically mine. Cause like, you know, I got a loan, you know, got a car payment basically, but I wasn't happy. And I realized why I wasn't happy. It was because I didn't adjust for inflation. The 50,000 number had grown a little bit. So I'm like, oh, maybe it's 60,000.

Maybe it's 80,000. Maybe it's six figures. Or maybe it's just owning a bunch of stuff. So yeah, that's what I pursued. But I mean, my story really with minimalism, it kind of starts with Josh because when we were in the corporate world, we were miserable.

We had accumulated so many different burdens, like whether it's debt or whether it's, you know, an overabundance of clutter, whether it was, you know, chasing a job title. I mean, that, it was very, very depressing. Right. But I noticed Josh who started being a little bit less depressed.

And that's when I went to him and I asked him like, hey man, what are you doing? That's making you so happy. Why the hell are you so happy? Right. And that's when he introduced this thing called minimalism. Well, walk me up to the point of this epiphany, Joshua,

because I think it's important to understand the inflection point that introduced you to this new way of living. Sure, yeah. my mom died, my marriage ended both in the same month. So it was like sort of this double car crash, right? It's like you get hit by one thing and then it swerves you into this other thing.

And at the same time, my corporate career, I was really discontented by it. I was managing 150 retail stores, which I know is ironic with the whole minimalism thing now, but maybe it took that in a way for me to recalibrate. But these two big events happened to me and I started questioning everything and literally every thing, the things in my life especially,

because I had spent the last dozen years, I was 30 at the time. And as I began questioning those things in my life, I realized like I had worked so hard to buy a bunch of things to make me happy. And those things aren't doing their job. And so they had become my priority though. And so of course my priorities were totally out of whack,

achievement, success. Now it's not that Ryan and I are against material possessions. And we don't think it's morally wrong to own things, right? We own stuff. I got here in a car today. I have a bed and a couch. Wearing a nice jacket.

Yeah, thank you. A lot of money spent on hair products. But the thing is I had such an attachment to the things, but also the perception of other people. And a lot of that has to do with ego. And so ultimately what I figured out at the time was, oh, my priorities are really out of whack. And thankfully I stumbled across minimalism,

thanks to the internet at the time. Someone tweeted Colin Wright, a friend of ours who was in our first minimalism documentary. And he lived with 52 items. And I didn't aspire to that, but it made me realize there was a relatively normal person doing very abnormal things. And I wasn't, I didn't want to live his life, but that exposed me to a bunch of other minimalists. People like Leo Babalto, Courtney Carver, and Joshua Becker, more normal people

who had like families and houses. Right, Leo's got like five kids or something like that. Six. Six, right. He didn't even have condoms. He was so minimalist. What's interesting about this to me is you could have given a different set of circumstances, like ended up at a Buddhist monastery

or joining the Peace Corps. Like clearly you were having an existential crisis about how you were living. You had premised your entire life on this idea that this very traditional upward corporate trajectory would deliver on its promise of making you happy. You achieve those things, you're lacking that sense of connection

that you thought it would deliver and you go searching, right, and you stumble upon minimalism, but what if it had been some other thing? There are other paths to sort of finding a little bit more fulfillment and purpose, but you, for whatever reason, like minimalism was the thing that you connected with. Yeah, by the way, I think that I connected with it because there wasn't a particular dogma

among the people that I saw. There wasn't like a 12 step thing. And I look at a lot of the stuff now. Don't you dare talk bad on the 12 step thing. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about 12 steps. But like the five steps to declutter your closet. Right, yeah.

And so like, it wasn't like the how-to side of things wasn't that appealing to me. It was the why-to side of things that really made me scrutinize what I was doing. Even now, you won't see me and Ryan talk about the 17 ways to declutter your kitchen. We're not gonna do a video about that. Someone else wants to do that, that's fine.

I don't think that actually addresses the problem. I think those types of solutions, they often cause new problems because we begin to focus on, we turn those things into the main focus and it removes our focus from whatever the underlying problem is. And so I was fascinated by what these people were doing and how they were doing it,

but I was much more focused on the why. That's what the new film, Less Is Now, it really starts with that question. How might your life be better with less? Now that's a how question, but it's a disguised question. It's actually a why question. You see that in the anecdotes and the stories of the kind of everyday people

that have undergone this process and how it's emotionally changed their lives or their perspective on how they live day to day. But it is true and we've talked about this before that on a surface level, it's about getting rid of your stuff, but it's really not about that at all. And I think a lot of the focus

or the kind of news narrative around it is around decluttering, but decluttering, the process of decluttering is really just a way to clear space. So you can, you know, marshal your awareness onto the things that are important that you wanna focus on. Yeah.

Is that fair or accurate? Yeah, no, I think that is totally fair. It's interesting though. It makes me think how the media wants to sell a solution to a symptom rather than address the problem. I mean, that doesn't really speak to what you were talking, I mean, what you were asking, but. Well, the problem is so massive and we're all living,

you know, amidst this grand delusion, you know, that we, it's our entire society is founded upon the idea that, you know, you played out in your own life and had to figure out for yourselves, wasn't delivering on the promise, right? This idea that we should be seeking security and comfort and, you know, salary increases in the new car and all the messages that bombard us

everywhere we turn our head reinforces that. And yet what it doesn't do, and the movie does a beautiful job of illustrating this, is remind us about what's most important, which is, you know, community and the connection to the people that we love and, you know, pursuing your life with some level of intentionality. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I mean, Amy Leonard talks about this in the documentary about deficit advertising. So, you know, advertisers, big corporations, whatever, they go out of their way to make you feel like you're missing something in your life. So that's why we chase the bigger paycheck. So we can go out and buy those things that subconsciously we're like, oh man,

if I just had like a little bit of a nicer car, I'd have a better ride to work. And enjoy my commute a little bit more. And if I just a little bit bigger of a house, I could have that Pilates studio. And I mean, yeah. You just notch it up and then you get there and then you're like, well, I don't feel that way yet,

but it's because there's a guy who's living a little bit higher up on the hill than I am. Yeah. By the way, I don't wanna moralize any of this either. I don't wanna say it's better or worse to own fewer possessions, right? I'm not saying that it's better or worse to own fewer possessions, right? I'm not saying that it's good that Ryan and I own less than we used to own, right? I'm not saying it's bad either.

It is probably more appropriate for us given the constraints. But to the point you were asking about, Rich, our material possessions are sort of this physical manifestation of what's going on inside us, right? That's that existential crisis you talked about. And so the external clutter is a way that we sort of visualize the mental clutter, the psychological clutter,

the emotional clutter, the spiritual clutter, this internal clutter. And we found that like with minimalism, yeah, it could have been Buddhism or Christianity or anything else that we would have stumbled into. But stumbling into minimalism allowed us to deal with the thing that had become this priority in our lives. Stuff had become this priority. And so it started with the stuff,

but that's sort of the initial bite at the apple, right? And then it goes to simplifying all other areas of life. But there's this moment that you experienced and that you see in the people profiled in the film where the lights kind of go on, like as they begin this process, there's like an enervating that occurs in their lives. Like they become very emotionally involved

in the process of decluttering their lives. And it becomes like exciting and there's a momentum that kind of occurs. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about the, like the everyday minimalists that we have in our film. Yeah, no, it is encouraging. There's one gentleman in there who talks about how once he started simplifying and got to where he,

you know, felt like he wasn't living in a bunch of clutter, he kind of realized like, oh, like I've had everything I ever needed this whole time. And he gets emotional and he's an older guy. He's not like a millennial. Right, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I love having those kind of everyday of a minimalist

in there to kind of talk about their own personal experiences especially because Josh and I, we can tell our stories all day long, but you know, you need other people to resonate with than just, you know, two dudes with really great hair. It is really great though. We didn't want it to be the Josh and Ryan story, right? Like the first film, Minimalism,

it was sort of exposing people to different ideas of attentional living and different areas of minimalism. There were minimalist architects in there, Buddhists, etc. In this film, we didn't want it to just be, oh, Josh and Ryan tell their story, but it sort of circled around that initial story of us, but we brought in some experts, but then we also had those 30 of those everyday minimalists.

So we wanted all these different perspectives. You probably noticed the diversity in the film, but it's not just like an ethnic diversity. It's like we have a 17 year old and a 70 year old in the film. And all we did was we put a call out and said, hey, does anyone have a story about how they've been affected by our first film

and they've simplified their lives and how did that work out for you? And we just started bringing those people into the film. Right. So taking it back, you have this experience in the wake of your marriage dissolving and your mother's passing where you decide that you're gonna basically change your lifestyle

top to bottom. You get rid of all this stuff. You have that lights going on experience. You seem lighter in your shoes. I assume you're still at the job at that point, but you were just showing up with a little bit of a bigger smile. Yeah, I was also,

I was doing a better job setting expectations. So we were on call like doctors, but I wasn't saving anyone. I couldn't even save myself. And yet I had to answer the phone at 10 PM. If my boss's boss wanted to know something about the sales transactions for any of the stores that day. So it was a regular occurrence.

The last thing I did when my head hit the pillow was check my BlackBerry. The first thing when I got up in the morning was check my BlackBerry. And throughout the day, all throughout the day, I was checking. And I started setting expectations and that was sacrilegious where we worked.

I called my boss, I'm not gonna take phone calls in the evening anymore. And I could audibly hear his jaw drop on the phone because what do you mean? That's not like you realize that he didn't realize that was an option even for himself. I got a call from our boss, we had the same boss. And he was like, is Josh, like, is he depressed?

Like maybe planning on killing himself or something? Giving away my stuff, right? Giving away stuff. He's like saying, hey, I don't care what you think. I can't, I'm not taking phone calls at six, yeah. But isn't that kind of sad? Like that's the reaction though. Yeah, yeah.

I suppose like, wow, is he doing something that changes his life so that he experiences more peace or more contentment? Like I said, I don't think this is an indictment on stuff or even on corporate America. It's an indictment on chasing, on craving, on attachment. Well, also on your relationship to externalities, right? So Ryan, at some point you begin to cotton on to this,

like what's going on with Joshua, right? Yeah, I mean, it was after him setting boundaries. It was, you know, after that phone call from our boss, because I did not see a depressed Josh. I saw someone who was like taking control of something that he had no control over. And it wasn't until, so he moved into a new place after he split up with his wife and it was like a two bedroom, one bath, maybe two baths, but it was only half full. But the one thing that was missing

that really stood out to me was the TV. And every time I'd go over, I'd be like, dude, when are you getting a TV? What kind of TV are you gonna get? Because that's how we like compared success in the corporate world. Like what kind of TV you got at your house? How many TVs do you have? How big is that TV, right? I don't know what Freud would say about this.

So at a certain point, he's like, I don't think I'm gonna get a TV. I'm like, interesting. And yeah, eventually I wanted whatever he was doing. And when he said minimalism, you know, I don't know, you asked that in the beginning about, would it have been a different path? You know, could it have been a different path

if we didn't find minimalism? Right, well, if he shaved his head and disappeared to a monastery for a while and came back, maybe you wouldn't have been so. Yeah, probably not. Probably not. Yeah. So, but you know't have been so. Yeah, probably not. Probably not. Yeah. So, but you know, he introduced his term minimalism to me. And if, you know, to be honest, if it was someone else,

I don't know how seriously I would have taken it, but him and I have very, it's weird. We have like exact opposite Myers-Briggs personalities, but we have very similar personalities in other ways. So I was like, if this works for him, I'll at least give it a shot and look at it and see if it'll work for me. So the first video he sent me was Colin Wright

with the 50 things that he owned. And I'm like, okay, like this is a little weird. But then like I got into other minimalist, Courtney Carver, Leo Babalta, Joshua Becker. And you know what I saw is common sense. I saw a lot of people talking about all these common sense things that I knew internally, but for some reason I never listened to. And minimalism for me, it was an opportunity

for me to start over. It was an opportunity for me to, well, do a Josh shit and gain control of what I had lost control over. So I got really excited. I'm like, dude, I wanna be a minimalist. Like, this is awesome. Like I get it. What should I do? Right, right. So you do this packing party thing. Right, so yeah, exactly. So, you know, in the excitement, he was like,

well, what if we pack up all your stuff and then unpack it as you need it? I'm like, that's a great idea. Especially cause I'm a very extreme person when it comes to things. Like Josh had pared down over several months. He made some very slow changes over months time. But for me, like I needed faster results.

So the packing party was perfect for me. I think probably most of your listeners right now, I don't know if the packing party would be the best option for especially if they got families and stuff. Although we have totally seen families. Well, yeah, I'll say this. Well, everyone's at home thinking of interesting things to do, right?

There's a lot of people rearranging the furniture in their houses right now, losing their minds. Yeah, this is like the perfect time for them to confront other stuff. The one time you're really confronted with everything, like truly confronted is when you move to a new house. And so that was sort of the impetus of the packing party idea was like,

when you move, you actually have to go through everything you own and do something with it, whether it's store it, box up, whatever, it doesn't matter, you have to do something with that stuff. And now is sort of the second time where this has happened, where people have been in their homes for way more than they anticipated. And we thought at the beginning,

people were reaching out to us, like, hey, you guys, you're probably upset that you got rid of all that stuff, aren't you, now that you're stuck at home? And I'm like, yeah, the broken waffle iron is real. I'm missing that right now, right? Like the third bread maker that I got as a wedding gift. And so anyway, that packing party,

we've had dozens of people do. In fact, we have a book coming out next year called Love People Use Things. It's like the whole sort of synopsis of people do. In fact, we have a book coming out next year called Love People Use Things. It's like the whole sort of synopsis of our message. And in that book, we had 47 different families do a packing party. So it may seem radical, but it's not so radical that, I mean, we've had a lot of people do it.

Yeah, the idea being you pack everything up and then you slowly unpack and deliberately decide which items you actually need to use and the rest gets donated or sold. Right, yeah, I mean, Josh had asked me, he's like, what if you unpack things as you needed it? Like that would really help. And I'm like, yeah, that's a great idea.

That's what we should do. And so you can imagine, yeah, my clothes for work, bed and bed sheets, toothbrush, so forth and so on. But I'll tell you the packing party, it was something to like change my state, but I honestly didn't realize how powerful that was going to be until it was over. And I was confronted with all my things. And, uh, the biggest revelation was I had this dream of retiring early, but I had like very little retirement, very little in my retirement accounts.

But here I saw tens of thousands of dollars that I wasn't using worth of stuff. And I'm like, hmm, I could probably be sitting in my retirement account right now. But I remember going to Josh, I'm like, dude, this is, we have to do a website and talk about this packing party. Cause this is something.

So that was the original impetus to start the blog. Yeah, it started 10 years ago yesterday. I know I saw on Instagram, your 10 year, you guys have been doing this for 10 years. 10 years. Unbelievable, man. How do you, what's the difference between your relationship to minimalism then in the early days to now?

Like how has it evolved or changed? I think it's changed quite a bit recently. I've become more allergic to the sort of how to side of things. I've never been a giant fan of it, but I've realized that it's actually, before I was somewhat neutral on it, it just wasn't for me. But now I think it's often a problem.

And I think it's an opiate in a way because it helps, as Ryan alluded to earlier, sort of the symptoms. Like if I show you how to declutter your kitchen, but you don't know why you're doing it, it's gonna be re-cluttered a month from now. And so getting a deep understanding, if you understand the why, truly understand the why,

the how takes care of itself. And so we'll talk about some of the how stuff that we've done that may not be applicable for everyone, by the way. My why looks different from Ryan's why. And that's why starting out with that question, how might your life be better with less is really the foundation of it.

Then we can talk about the how too. But it's the process, it's the how that opens the portal to the why, right? Like if you're living your life in a certain way with blinders on and just moving in a particular direction, it's very hard to answer that question of why. Like you gotta shake things up and do something different in order to kind of confront that, right?

Like short of you doing the packing party, would you have been, if confronted with the why question, how are you gonna answer that? So it's almost like there needs to be a deconstruction of your life a little bit. And there's some practicalities that get baked into that. It's interesting, yeah.

It's almost like the why was so much in my face at the time of how miserable I was. It was like- But also you're holding onto it so hard because your whole life was invested in that. Yeah, but if it wasn't for that amount of, or that amount of, or that level of stress and discontent and depression,

I don't know if I would have. Right. Because the problem is sometimes- Pain is the lever. Yeah. The ultimate lever. Yeah, and comfort is like, I don't know. Comfort to me is, don't get me wrong. I like being comfortable, but-

It's fuel for denial. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the thing I look at with what Ryan, I think Ryan's actually the perfect example of if you understand the why, the how takes care of itself. No one gave him a how to. There was not a prescription for a packing party ever.

Like it didn't exist, right? What did exist were a bunch of decluttering tips and other things that we had seen for decades and never paid any attention to because that's not that compelling. It's compelling in the moment at the checkout line, the same way candy is appealing at the checkout line, right? But it's not nutritious in any way. And so when Ryan truly understood the why, like, I don't feel at peace. I feel chaos. Let me sort through this. Let me not fix it because nothing is fixed, right?

There's always change, right? It's not about fixing something. It's about addressing the problem. And I think that's what the packing party did. It was the impetus. Now, yeah, we talk about the how, but you can, Ryan always talk about how, what we share is like a recipe

and you can sort of tweeze out your own ingredients and create your own version of it, adjust for taste. Yeah. So how long after this packing party and this decision to write about these things before you guys are no longer working at the corporation? Right, like I know you got laid off. I got laid off, yeah.

Months after Josh. Josh technically got laid off too. I laid myself off. You did? Yeah. It was, well, they came to me, so this was 10 years ago as well. They came to me right before Christmas and,

hey, as soon as we close, or as soon as we finish out the holiday shopping season, which by the way, we've turned the holiday season into a shopping season. Think about that for a moment. But they said, as soon as we do this, I need you to close eight stores and lay off 42 employees. I'd done this a bunch of times. It was never fun, but it got easier over time.

So I laid off a bunch of people and fired people. It wasn't that big of a deal. But then with this new perspective, I had been simplifying my life that entire year. They said, you got two weeks to put together this plan. Give us the 42 names that you're going to lay off. And so I went home and within two days, I was putting the spreadsheets together, but looking at the spreadsheet was like looking at a rainbow in black and white, in gray scale, right? Because these were just names and statistics. And I get that's how you're going

to make a decision like this, but these weren't just names. These were husbands and fathers and daughters and mothers. And these were people. And my livelihood was in their hands and I knew that like there was some sort of discontent but at that point I realized the corporation we were at no longer aligned with my personal values and so I turned the the plan in my name was the first name on the list you say you really did lay yourself off yeah Yeah, yeah. And I didn't really, I didn't have a plan.

I just had reduced my bills so significantly living in Dayton, Ohio, $500 a month apartment. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna try this writing thing out for a while. There's a coffee shop in my neighborhood. They actually end up in the documentary press. And I said, I'm just gonna, I'll just work there and I'll have enough money to pay my bills

and I'll write for the rest of the time. I wanted to write fiction initially. Thanks to Ryan, this was a beautiful accident in a different direction. Right. So you guys start meeting at press, you start working on this blog. Yeah.

I mean, that's what we did for the first year. Right. We just wrote on the blog and yeah, put our thoughts out there. Was there a moment, like a tipping point moment with the blog where yeah, put our thoughts out there. Was there a moment, like a tipping point moment with the blog where you're like, wow, like this could be a thing. Like we could actually craft a vocation around this.

I think for me, it's the San Francisco event. For me it was before that. It was before that. Yeah, for me it was Leo Bobalta shared something that we did and And that was- I was reading his blog back then too. I mean, that was like, everyone was reading his stuff. And we had like more people show up in one day.

I wasn't a lot of people. It was like 9,000 people or something. For me, it was like, oh, we haven't seen. So we talk about this in the film, how like 52 readers that first month turned into 500, which turned into 5 million or whatever. And so there was a moment there, but around that same time, it was like,

hey, you guys are the minimalist, aren't you? Did you write a book about minimalism? And it's like, oh, I guess we should do that, huh? We are the minimalist, yeah. And so we did, we put out a book. At the time, we just self-published a book at the end of our first year and we went on tour, but it was really just, we went around the country to coffee shops

and it made me realize like, oh, if we can get eight people to show up and buy a book. Most stops were like, yeah, two to eight people. Yeah, if we sell 10 books. When you're living minimally, you don't need much, right? Oh, exactly. Feed yourselves. Yeah, we can sell 10 books.

Then we have a place to stay for the night. If not, then we just sleep in Ryan's Toyota Corolla. And that's how it worked out for us. Well, the first movie did such a great job at spinning that yarn of you guys going on the road and showing up at places and three people would show up and then slowly a few more, a few more, and you see the build,

but it's the grittiness of the early days that, you know, was so fun. I'm just thinking about that South by event in that minimalism documentary. Cause I remember being so excited for that South by Southwest event, like we made it. Right. We finally, we finally.

It's like, it's a buddy movie road trip on, you know, like a wizard of Oz movie with South by Southwest being you guys going to meet Oz. And I was thinking this was like, you know, the apex of our journey. Like we were at South by Southwest, and then like, yeah, three people showed up to our talk. They're like on their phones.

If I don't know why it's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, Ryan's trying to talk about living with Les. Hi everybody. Yeah, that was great. Lanyards. This big room with like three people in it. Well, that's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Oh my goodness. Ryan's trying to talk about living with less. Hi everybody. Yeah, that was great. Lanyards. This big room with like three people in it. Well, that movie is so well done. And I have to imagine that that had to be, you know,

life-changing in some regard. I think it's most people's introduction to your work because Netflix put it right out front and so many people watched it. The first question I have about that first movie is how did you connect with Matt D'Avella? Cause Matt D'Avella, he's had his own like crazy trajectory blowing up on YouTube and being this massive creator

on that platform. 100%. He's all grown up. We connected with him on Twitter when he was a wedding videographer. And I saw this video he made called most wedding videographers suck. And I still bring that up to him constantly.

But he was doing that and he was doing like other commercial work for Toyota or Subaru or something. And we hired him to do the trailer for our second book, Everything That Remains. And we did an event out in New York to sort of celebrate this. And he filmed that event and made a trailer for that book that we put up on YouTube. And that was sort of it. And then a few months later, I said, hey, we're getting ready to go on the road. 2014, we did a hundred city tour, right? And said, hey, do you want to come on the road with us and try to make a documentary? And he had been wanting to do something with his creative skills other than commercial work,

right? And so he's like, yeah, I'll give it a shot. At the end of the tour, it was like, he just had a few hard drives with like a thousand hours of footage. It was like, hey, good luck with that. And then- So he just went away and came back with a cut for you guys? Yeah. I remember dropping off at the airport and I just remember thinking to myself, like. I don't think this is a movie. Yeah, like I have no idea

how he's gonna pull this together. But there was no budget for it. I mean, we were just passionate about it. So it's not like we had a lot to lose, but then he sent that first cut and yeah, I was instantly like, oh wow, like Matt knows what he's doing. And I always make sure and tell people that because people will come up to me and they'll be like,

oh, you're the guy from the minimalism documentary. Great doc, you did such a good job. And I'm like, I wish I could say it was me, but it's really Matt D'Avella who did that whole documentary. He did an unbelievable job and all the accolades and success that he's enjoying on YouTube are well-deserved. Oh yeah, what he does is amazing on YouTube. And he has built up this amazing following,

especially of young people who really, he's brought the message of minimalism to a crowd that maybe Ryan and I weren't ever going to reach either. So yeah, he does such a, he makes these like mini documentaries. I know every one of his videos is like, should enjoy a theatrical release. Right, yeah.

That's awesome. I hope he gets that. I'm gonna tell him my comment. Yeah, and he's a guy who walks the talk. Like he just this past week gave away all his stuff yet again. And him and his wife are on the road. And now in Sydney, like they're just gonna travel. They literally everything they own is in like

little carry on suitcases. Yeah, it's a beautiful example of how you can turn your life around on a dime when you have the power to let go of anything in your life. And that, I mean, that's exactly what he displayed with that. It was, cause it's not about, minimalism is not about owning nothing.

It's just about breaking free from that attachment, breaking free from that, I don't know, that, I don't know what another word for it. Just that attraction. There's a sense that, oh, if you're gonna be a minimalist, that you're self-flagellating or you're some kind of martyr. When in truth, you're just purchasing freedom for yourself. Absolutely, absolutely.

And choices, right? To be able to, self-employment is such a gift, but it gives him with the things that he does, the ability to just pack it up and go wherever he wants, which is unbelievable. Yeah, and you see him work, it's amazing. You wouldn't think he's able to, he has the strangest sort of,

he's like hiding under the table, looking up at the camera. You're like, what is he doing? Is that a crotch shot? I'm not sure what's going on here, but somehow he just, he has- And a total one man show. When I did his, I was one of the early guests

on his podcast and he's got all these cameras and he's doing it all himself. Like he's manning the cameras, he's asking the questions. He's got the monitor there. I'm like, this looks stressful. Get a little help. But he's like, no, he knows what he's doing. He's like a master of his domain.

Well, and his hidden secret is his skill at editing. So we had, well, we had some help on this film, Angus Wall and his, I don't know if you Angus Wall, he's David Fincher's editor. So he had like Fight Club. He edited the Social Network. He won some Academy Award for that. He edited, what's the one with,

what's the other big one he did with- It's on the tip of my tongue too. Girl with the dragon tattoo. Oh, wow. He did the opening sequence to that. Anyway, his company did the animation and Les is now. And he was actually, we were gonna bring him and that team on to edit the film.

But Matt was just like, no, I'm good. I got it covered. Yeah, and that's the thing. The weird thing about it is, I don't think Matt likes editing at all, but that is his hidden, he's the Mozart of editing. And even when we went from fourth cut to fifth cut, Angus saw it and he was like,

this looks like it went through 60 different cuts of the film. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, kudos to him. So the movie explodes and you guys kind of ride this wave. You have the books and you started the podcast. You're now 10 years into this thing. You've got millions of people all over the world

that care deeply about the things that you talk about. And what's really cool and compelling about this platform that you now manage is that it's completely audience supported. Like you start all your podcasts, advertisements suck and you have this population of people that adore you and basically, are willing to subscribe

to your wisdom and you've been able to craft out, live it, making a living off of this for a decade. Most of what we do is free and available to the public, right? And there's, you know, a small portion where we sort of dive deeper and our private podcast is on Patreon. And yeah, we do have an audience that

supports us there, but that's also, it's almost like when you go to, well, back when we could go to the comedy store or places like that, where people sort of work out ideas. We work out things and sometimes Ryan and I just argue on the private podcast about things because we don't agree about something or we bring a guest on and we argue with them about it. I like to think of it as talking things out. Yes. But most of what we do is, whether it's the blog or the main podcast,

it's accessible to anyone. Right. When you were touring, how many cities did you do? I mean, you guys invited me to come when you did the Fillmore in San Francisco, which was like so cool, man. You guys were filling theaters like all across the country. Oh yeah.

Yeah, you're at the Fillmore with us. Super fun. That was great. Yeah. I mean, the most we've ever done was 100 city, 119 events in one year. Wow. We canceled a tour this year, 2020, because of 2020. For obvious reasons.

And yeah, I mean, we've done what, nine tours in 10 years. So anywhere from a few cities, like the Simply Southern tour was three cities. We went with Dave Ramsey's team and did a small tour in the South to a hundred cities everywhere in between. But yeah, it just became a part of, and by the way, all those tours were different as well. Sometimes it's a podcast tour, sometimes we do a talk, sometimes we'll do book readings and book signings. It kind of just depends on what's going on.

So Dave Ramsey features pretty prominently in the new movie. So how did that relationship develop? How does he fit into the minimalist ecosystem? His daughter really likes us. Is that what it is? His daughter works for him. She's a very talented author.

Her name is Rachel Cruz and she has a great YouTube show. And she invited us to come on her YouTube show. It's in Nashville and it's a whole production. They have a whole studio set up there. I mean, he has a thousand employees at his compound. It's a really impressive setup. And they, I mean, they work really hard to teach financial literacy.

They're now being taught in 25% of the high schools around the country, the Dave Ramsey curriculum. He has a whole team, like a hundred people on that team. His whole thing is about living fiscally responsible. Like not living outside of your means and making sure that you're making prudent financial, like essentially like conservative prudent financial decisions.

I feel like he's like a minimalist finance guy basically. Cause you know, minimalism, it's funny when I first, heard it and heard about it and looked into it, I kind of felt like it was this niche type thing. And then like, once I got into it, I'm like, oh, like this can be applied to anything. And I think Dave Ramsey essentially applies minimalism to finances and yeah.

Right. He's got some great financials. His whole team though, they're great. Anthony O'Neill, Chris Hogan. Yeah. Yeah, the whole lot of them. Anthony O'Neill, Chris Hogan. Yeah. Yeah, the whole lot of them. John Deloney. Yeah, Ken.

So we're well into this pandemic cycle, fraying at the edges as we crawl towards 2021. Oh my gosh. And I'm interested in how you're thinking about the relationship between consumerism and minimalism with this very specific moment. The way that I'm kind of thinking about it is that on the one hand, like nobody's going to the mall,

they're not shopping, they're at home. So it's forcing people to perhaps be a little bit more reflective about those habits on some level. Yet at the same time, we're all empowered by these tools and we're spending these technological tools we're all in front of our screens way too much. And that habituation to shopping has just migrated to the devices.

I don't know what the statistics are, but I suspect, I'm certain that online shopping has skyrocketed, but has consumerism overall increased during this moment? Like, how are you thinking about people's habits? What does that look like right now? It depends what we mean by consumerism. So I do think consumerism is the right way to frame it.

That is one of the problems, right? Consumption isn't the problem. We talk about this in Less Is Now, because we all need to consume some stuff. Consumerism, which is what we could just identify as compulsory consumption in a way, as though we feel that we must buy this in order to either be complete,

Ryan talked about the deficit advertising earlier, or the, what else does Annie call it in the film? The vertical integration. Yeah, and so no longer are you just competing with your next door neighbor, it's your... Yeah, talk about that. That's a really fascinating, important idea, I think. So here's the new problem.

If consumerism is one problem, when we relate that to stuff, materialism is really that. The other side of consumerism is distraction, I think. And so the thing that Ryan and I will say is scrolling is the new smoking. And this epiphany hit me when I was walking outside of like a Chipotle or something, I see someone outside in the cold, like in the Midwest,

scrolling on their phone, cigarette in hand at the same time. And it's not to judge that person, it's to see myself in that person. Like I don't smoke, but like I could see, my habits are showing, right? And it's not just the smoking. Now, 50 years ago, everyone sort of casually puffed

cigarettes, we'd be at this table right now, just smoking and talking, right? Be a cloud. Right, but you did that now, it would seem nutty. If I just lit up a cigarette right now, you wouldn't know how to respond to that. The only person who can do that is Dave Chappelle, by the way.

But besides him, like it would seem nutty. And yet it doesn't seem that strange if I would, because of the three of us, but at your average setting, if I were to pull out a phone and just check it really quick, but it's just as bothersome in many ways. It's secondhand distraction. And so I think over the last decade in particular, what we've seen is a lot of new ways to distract ourselves. Ryan and I distracted ourselves back in the oddies

and in the late nineties with stuff, but now the distractions are digital and they're right there and they're more enticing than ever. And the same thing happens, right? In the material world, it was high paid demographers, statisticians, marketers, aggregating your eyeballs onto their product or service. Now, since you're the product,

it's aggregating your eyeballs onto the product and the service to sell you products and services. And so in a weird way, a dystopian way, it elevates the problem, it amplifies the problem. Right, I mean, without a doubt, and this is subject matter and terrain that movies like the social dilemma go into at length, it's not just enticing, it's truly addictive

and it's designed to be that way. The revelatory idea that I had not thought about before until I saw your movie was this idea of the kind of exponential expansion of keeping up with the Joneses, right? Like this consumerist impulse originally derived from, you know, perhaps something genetic within us to try to keep pace with our neighbors.

So-and-so has got that refrigerator or that car, like I've got to get that too. But now by dint of these technological tools, everybody's our neighbor. So it's not just the person living next door, but it's the celebrity on Instagram and you get to peek into their world. Or now on Zoom, you get to see

what everybody's study and living room looks like. And it's almost impossible to not run that comparison against what you have or don't have. And how does that impact your consumer choices or your sense of innate discontent when you attempt to measure yourself against that impossible standard? Yeah, I think comparison is the killer of joy,

regardless of, you know, kind of how you're comparing yourself or what you have to other people. It is interesting, like with the whole social media, it's like, you know, my sister, when I was in Ohio a year ago, you know, back when we were traveling without any fear. Yeah.

She was like, do you feel cool? Cause you got, you know, X amount of subscribers on Instagram. And I'm like, no, I was like, do you think I'm cool? Because I have that many subscribers. She's like, yeah, I think it's pretty cool. And I'm like, if you're looking at subscribers, like I have, I don't even know what I have.

I know it's not a million, but I'm like, you know, if you got to where I'm at with however many subscribers, then you'd be looking at a million. And then once you had a million, you'd be looking at 3 million. And then once you had a million, you'd be looking at 3 million. It's like a never ending comparison wheel that we put ourselves on. It's failure.

It's in a weird way, all success is failure. So what are the tactics that you deploy to prevent yourself from indulging in that kind of fruitless mental exercise. Cause it's hard, right? Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, I don't look at specific numbers.

Like that's one way because I think, I'm a numbers guy in general. I love math, I love spreadsheets. So I could very easily get wrapped up into it just to like make a game out of it. But I try to not gamify it as much as possible. But I'll be honest, like because of, man, this is going to sound like some, you know,

Buddhist hybrid thing. But because of how destructive my ego was in the corporate world, anytime I start to feel the ego kicking in, which it kicks in all the time. But when I start to feel it kicking in with like, oh, how many subscribers did I gain today? Or how many?

Cause I did feel that in the early days. I try not to stroke that ego. And by practicing that over the last 10 years, I am able to just, you know, kind of still feel like I felt 10 years ago. I don't feel any more popular or successful. I mean, even it's funny you were talking about, you know, us having a lot of people who adore us,

I think is what you said. And like, they're willing to support us. And I appreciate those people so much, but like hearing you say it, like my ego was like, oh wow, that is amazing. We do have all these people who adore us and who will support us. But yeah, so, you know, I guess just to reiterate,

like when my ego starts to get out of control, I will try to like put it in check a little bit because ultimately when I know if I ever start to play that game, it'll never be enough. Yeah, I don't have any tactics. You guys aren't getting into Twitter spats and things like that. Like you seem to just, I can tell by the way

that you share your content online, that it's kind of at an arm's length. Like you put it, you make sure that your stuff is being shared, but you're not in there, going back and forth with people and stuff like that. A healthy detachment. I'm not the Buddha, right? Like the Buddha would be non-attachment, right?

But not needing to be, not needing the outcome and not needing any of it, by the way. By being detached, you realize that, this is gonna sound like a value judgment, but it's not. It's all a scam, man. It really, like, who cares's not. It's all a scam, man. It really like, who cares? Like it's all ego. Even by the way,

what have I changed my mind about recently? Helping people. I don't wanna help people. Let's be honest. Like helping people, that's just my ego saying I want to help people. Now I feel it's still viscerally because I've programmed myself.

You'll be externally validated if you say that out loud. Right, right. It's my, no, no, no, no. But maybe the truth behind that is, well, I want peace. I want to speak the truth. And if that helps some people, that's wonderful. If it doesn't, it can still be wonderful. I don't need that because if once I become attached

to needing to help someone, it's a different type of prison. It's a well decorated prison cell, but it's still a prison cell. You can help people for selfish reasons though too, cause it makes you feel good. It actually makes you- 100%. It gives your life a little bit more meaning

and it builds self-esteem. So even if your impetus, your impulses is selfish, it's still a good thing to follow through on. Yeah. By the way, I'm not saying that helping people is good or bad, right? It's not a, and also not helping people is not good or bad by default then, right?

I don't wanna throw that judgment out there. I'm simply saying that like, I have to be honest with myself that like, it's my ego that's involved where I'm like, it's what Ryan said, you know, if I have 10 million Instagram followers, I'm helping more people. Well, is that the truth or is that just a statistic?

I feel like there's two interesting things happening right now, which is the undeniable rise of popularity around minimalism and related ideas. Like there is a groundswell of people who are feeling disconnected and dissatisfied in a way and are discovering this way of living that is giving their lives greater meaning and purpose. But in tandem with that,

we're also seeing this acceleration of our materialistic consumer culture. I mean, you see it in the film too, the kind of rapidization of home delivery and Amazon and the drones and how everything is just seems like it's on steroids right now, almost like this war of ideas that are like bumping up against each other.

Yeah, well, you also see the sort of corporatization of simplicity as well, right? When Marie Kondo is selling things at the container store. Yeah, exactly. The container store is actually one of the biggest problems, right? The container store allows us to hide our hoards. And this is an indictment on Marie Kondo.

I think she really does get to the why in her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. She obviously discusses the how-to stuff. That's her shtick, but she gets to the why. But when I see tuning forks for several hundred dollars and crystals and the commodification of simplicity. You don't need anything to simplify, right? Organizing is just well-planned hoarding. And the thing we talk about in the film is the average American household has 300,000 items in it, right? Now, I had a really organized version of that. I had basements full of bins and boxes and ordinal alphabetized system of CDs and DVDs. But it was just well-planned hoarding. The easiest way to organize your stuff

is to get rid of anything that's no longer adding value. Get rid of most of it. It's so much easier to quote unquote organize because you don't have anything that you have to organize. You're getting to the essence and you're stopped worrying about the form. I love that quote that you have to organize. You're getting to the essence and you're stopped worrying about the form. I love that quote that you shared recently. Everything is 100% off if you don't buy it.

Yeah. I think we shared that maybe on Black Friday or something. Man, I wish I could have told my 25 year old self that. He may have not been ready for it though. No, you said something about, real briefly about minimalism bringing meaning to people's lives. And actually, I don't know if minimalism brings meaning

to people's lives. I think it's minimalism helps someone etch a sketch, a new life, it helps them start over. And then from there, they can start to do meaningful things. And that's, I mean, that's really what less is now is about. It's about, you know, being able to start over, but it's, I've never, yeah. Thanks for however you phrased it made me think of it

in a way of, I don't think minimalism is. By getting it wrong. Right. I mean, I was alluding to that, but I hear what you're saying. No, that's a very good point. The question I was gonna ask was, what would you tell yourself five years ago

when you were well into the minimalism thing that you understand better now that maybe you didn't then as you kind of mature? Five years ago. Drop the prescriptions. Yeah. Like not the actual medical prescriptions, but like. You mean that back to the how to thing.

Yeah, but also like, the desire to give advice to people, that's also an ego thing, right? I have no more advice. I have some observations. If you want to hear my own observations about my own life, but even then going back and giving advice to my 35-year-old self would be almost counterintuitive.

Now, if I could show him some things, it would be the piece that's related to letting go of some of the attachments. Because I think Ryan and I, we picked up new attachments along the way, especially when that film came out. Talk about serving your ego when you get recognized on the street a dozen times a day, all of a sudden you start to believe that you're better than what you are.

And Ryan and I for a period of time, I think we went three years without doing any media as a result. Like I was just like, it doesn't feel good to need this. And because it feels like you're creating for the wrong reason. It feels as though like it's that externality you talked about.

Well, that's a healthy dose of self-awareness. Maybe, I mean, yeah, I'm still, yeah, working on eradicating that, right? Aren't we all? If you ever figure it out, let me know. Well, that's the thing, I don't think we ever figure it out. I think it is the eradication thing, right? It's, you don't figure out heart disease,

you try to eradicate it in a way. Yeah. So the first movie came out in 2016. What year was that? Yeah, so Netflix actually turned us down twice on that film. We, so we put out on our own. We did a theatrical release

through a company called Gather at the time. I don't even know if they're still around, but it was like theatrical on demand. Was that 2016? Yeah, that was May, 2016. And we did 400 theaters, US, Canada, Australia. And then from there, we put out on our, we went back to Netflix.

They said no again. And so we just put out on our own and it did relatively well. It resonated with people on iTunes and Amazon and other places. And so Netflix ended up saying yes to it. And that really started the conflagration because we sent the rest of our audience there

who had been listening to the podcast or reading the blog and they, whatever sparked, whatever algorithm does and it showed up on a lot more people's radar. I think that's how we showed up on your radar even. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I saw, well, I think you were doing a few podcasts. So I saw you guys popping up on some friends and people that I knew.

And then I saw the movie. I was very struck by the movie. And then we did one of our retreats in Italy and we screened it for the group that we had there, which was really cool. I was just remembering that today. That's awesome. And I can't remember whether I did that.

I think I had interviewed you and then we went on the trip or maybe I interviewed you right afterwards. I can't remember. But I just remember being very moved by that film. And then we did the podcast and I believe that you might've even alluded either on mic or off that you guys were working on another documentary.

Like there was gonna be a follow-up, right? And here we are five, maybe almost six years later before less is now premiere. So what was going, what happened? We ran into some technical difficulties. Well, Ryan and I, shortly after that came out, we went to Matt again and we did another tour. It was called the Less Is Now Tour.

And we went out filming that trying to sort of recreate the magic of the first film. And we put it together. We actually, we did an event at the Wilbur Theater. This is where Joe Rogan shot his like most recent comedy special. Beautiful spot. Yeah, we filmed it.

We gave a talk there. And we were going to sort of build the film around that talk. And we kind of ended up doing that in this later version of the film. And the talk looked fine. But it kind of looked like a stand-up comedy special without comedy. You're like waiting for the punch, because it was the venue, right? And so it just, it fell flat, it didn't work.

And so we did it again. We actually brought you out, we rented out this giant warehouse space. Right, that was like two years ago. Matt was there, there was tons of, was it that long ago? Almost three, yeah. Yeah, and this was the big shoot,

you had a live audience. I mean, that warehouse space is in the movie. Was that from that evening or did you guys end up reshooting this from a year and a half later? A year and a half later, we went to the same studio. Yeah, because I was telling Julie, we were watching, I was like, yeah, I was there that night

when these guys were doing this, but I'm like, it doesn't look like there's people there. Like when I was there, there was a lot of people there. So something was weird. Yeah, something was different about it. Yeah, so went from a comedy special to no comedy to a really well done TEDx talk is what that. That's what it looked like, right?

So that night you were there, you actually came up, you're gracious enough to do the intro for us. And we gave a talk in front of two different crowds because we figured, well, the Wilbur Theater aesthetic was the problem. And so we'll refilm talk in front of two different crowds because we figured, well, the Wilbur Theater aesthetic was the problem. And so we'll refilm this in front of, yeah, a beautiful aesthetic, this old abandoned warehouse. We'll build the set for it, bring a crew out, film it.

And it'll work out that way. That's the problem. Well then, so we get there and then we start interspersing it with these documentary elements. And it was like mixing vegan cheesecake, shout out to Rich Roll, and sweet and sour tofu, and just smushing them two together.

And you're like, I really like both of these things, but they don't work when I smush them together. And so we had to go back to the drawing board and we said, hey, we're just gonna scrap. So that was the second time we did the film. We scrapped the whole thing and started over again. And so this project we thought was gonna take us about four months ended up taking about four years from the inception until-

Cause when I was there that night, my sense was that you guys were in the final throws of wrapping this thing up. Oh, we were. Right, yeah. Of that version. Yeah. And those two will never see the light of day.

It's not that they were terrible. They just didn't, it didn't work for what we were trying to communicate. And we wanted to, we knew it wasn't, it wasn't, we weren't really putting our best foot forward. As Ryan said, it was either like a, it was like a, it would've been a really good YouTube video or something.

Yeah, it would've been a great YouTube video. I was just gonna say like, just to add on to it, when we got those two films back, I just remember not getting the feeling that I got with minimalism. Matt, for what we gave Matt, he did an amazing job for what we gave him. But yeah, it was, it's been a long road.

Well, it's tough too, because the first one had a built-in narrative and you guys are these underdogs and you're going on this trip, right? So there's a kind of a tempo or a propulsion to that. And in the follow-up, then the challenge is like, well, how do we, what's the next chapter of this and how do we make that compelling? Yeah.

I think that chapter ended up being the chapter before, like it was in a weird way, it's the first ever documentary prequel. Right. It doesn't require you to see the first film, obviously. Yeah, not at all. But, and there are two independent things. And this one, we were really aggressive

about keeping it under an hour in the whole spirit of minimalism. But in doing that, we had to cut out a lot of amazing, Ryan had this whole sub narrative about this. We can talk about it here because you haven't really talked about it publicly. No, I was like you Rich, I love the party. Yeah, I mean, this was something that I know about you,

but I've never heard you actually talk about. Like you've had your run in with drugs and alcohol. For sure, I do. I talk about whenever it comes up, like I'm totally okay to talk, especially coming from Ohio. Cause like, I hope someone in Ohio who is hooked on, you know, pain pills right now is listening to this

and knowing that they can totally pull themselves out of that situation. Cause I mean, Dayton, Ohio, where we're from, uh, I don't know if it still is, but it was the, the overdose capital of the world. So, uh, there's a lot of, um, just a lot of drugs there. Uh, but yeah, to Josh's point, there was this beautiful arc in the film that we couldn't put in there. Um, that I really tried to get men, Matt tried to put it, it just didn't work, but it was about, um, kind of going down that road and what pain that caused me and how I was able to, you know, kind of start over. But it's really, it's those stories again, unfortunately I couldn't make the film,

but I think it's those stories that really mean the most to people. Like they wanna hear about like, oh, Ryan isn't this perfect person who is just like one day like I'm gonna simplify my life. And I mean, it was a lot of work and it was a lot of pain and it was a lot of discomfort and I did get through it. But yeah, I was living in the, is it an opiate? Is that what pain pills are? Or are they?

They're opiates. Many of them are. Okay, right. So yeah they? They're opiates. Many of them are. Okay, right. So yeah, I mean, opiates were real easy access. And when I was working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hours a week, I would caffeinate myself. I didn't do a lot of Coke, mainly because my mom like turned me off to that drug

because I saw her go through her own thing. And I talk about that in the first documentary. But I would caffeinate myself, add a roll, whatever productivity thing I can get in my body. But then you get home at nine o'clock at night and it's hard to unwind, but it's really easy with like a pain pill and a beer.

And yeah, so I got- So it wasn't going out to the bars and getting loaded. It was more like, I wanna be, yeah. Right, okay. So good. I feel better. Unfortunately, we even did recreation scenes of Ryan getting beat up at a bar once.

That didn't make the film. We're actually gonna find a way to put a lot of this on Patreon or somewhere. I actually just got permission from Netflix today to use some of these scenes somewhere. And Ryan talked about it in the film, but it was spending upwards of $5,000 a month on opioids. I'm like, I might have a problem. I was talking to my therapist about it. And I remember mentioning that to them. And she was like, she's like, I've seen worse. I've seen people spending 10, $50,000 a month on drugs.

Time for a new therapist. Yeah, right. She's like, you're not that bad. I think she was just trying to like, make me not feel so bad. So did you just go cold Turkey and put it in the rear view? Or how did you get past it? I probably should have done a 12-step program,

but I just went off. I went off of opiates to get on, there's a product called like Suboxone, yeah. And you don't really, yeah, it's not like methadone, like methadone is something that you just go from illegal addictions to legal addictions, where Suboxone works a little bit different in the brain. So I was on that program for a little bit,

getting a lot of therapy. And I remember one time I like was going on a trip and I forgot to bring my Suboxone and I went like two weeks without it. And I was like, oh, I'm free. I'm done, I don't have to do this anymore. And you just never went back. Never went back, yeah.

Wow, good for you, man. Yeah, it was a long road. Like it's, I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy. The detox from opioids is horrible. It's miserable. I still don't think I've recovered a hundred percent. Like mentally, you mean like brain function wise?

Sleep wise, I think. Yeah, your deep sleep's still way off, right? Yeah, yeah. You guys are both rocking the aura ring. Yeah, your deep sleep is still way off. Yeah, yeah. You guys are both rocking the aura right now. Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, it was a long road, but when I started living intentionally and like really facing these things head on,

that wasn't like the magic answer, but it certainly gave me some leverage. Right. Yeah. Well, you know, alluding to something that I asked you about earlier, I mean, both of you guys survived quite a bit of childhood trauma.

Do you like, are you in therapy? Like how have you like worked through, you seem to have a pretty healthy relationship with your past now. Like you don't, it doesn't feel like you're holding onto a lot of resentment and those kinds of negative patterns, so how did you work through that? I think trauma is perspectival in many ways, right?

Like I talk about this in the film, so we can, my very first memory as a child is my father extinguishing a cigarette on mom's chest. Now, of course I'm going to remember something like that. Right, but I also don't think it traumatized me the same way that other things trauma. And so like, it's weird. Like I do remember that and I'm sure it was awful

or whatever, but there are other things that seem less consequential, but traumatize me even more. I was much more worried of like child protective services taking me away because my mom was an alcoholic. I think I was far more traumatized by that. Yeah, I certainly have a lot of forms of sort of OCD, like low, I've been diagnosed with OCD, but it's like low level.

I'm not like painting my floor every day or anything like that. But like, I'm sure that's a whole thing about control, right? Because of the chaos of childhood. It's almost like you have this bar of like, well, I'm not painting my floor. Like, yeah, yeah. Right.

It's, yeah. But you can have, just like anything, you can have an unhealthy relationship to a good thing. I'm sure that you could have an unhealthy relationship to minimalism where it is, I am absolutely in control of my environment all the time. The solution becomes the problem, right?

And that's why the whole anti-prescription thing for me now is like, yeah, I've been doing a lot more exploration this year around that, but when we are looking for, we don't actually need the solutions. If your chair is on fire right now, Rich, you're not gonna say, hey, can you hand me that fire safety manual over there? Because it would really help me out right now.

You don't need three steps to get out of a flaming chair. You're going to do it, you're gonna do it like that because your why is so powerful. The how takes care of itself, right? And so the problem is not a lack of instructions. The problem is that your butt is on fire. And so I think that too often we, any answer I give you here will sort of be

like a narrative overlay with respect to the trauma or whatever, but I think it does have to do with detachment ultimately. And maybe there was a healthy detachment and unhealthy detachment, I don't know. But a healthy detachment from, I don't cling to that anymore. I'm so glad you asked this question about like our

childhoods because I did hold onto a lot of resentment for my mother and father. And it was mainly because I felt kind of gypped of like, why would they do those things? You know, like, why didn't they, like they're the parents, I'm the child. They should be able to know what to do. And, you know, any normal parent

would put their child first. And I had all these, you know, narratives and all these questions and through therapy, I was, and I got to this recently within the last few years. I mean, I've always tried to have a good relationship with my parents with that resentment, but I was able to like, let a lot of it go

when it was a couple of years ago, seeing a therapist here in LA and he just kind of helped me get to this point of when things really started to like hit the fan, my parents were probably 30, maybe 32, you know, like they weren't, they're younger than I am now. Yeah, that's a trip when you realize that. Right, yeah, it is, it was. And I was like, wait a minute, than I am now. Yeah. And that's a trip when you realize that. Right, yeah, it is, it was.

And I was like, wait a minute, here I am. And put this narrative of like, they should have known what to do. And I'm like, I'm 37 years old. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. And like, for me to put that pressure on them is it wasn't fair. I didn't see it as fair.

And I finally looked at them. I'm like, oh, like, because you know, I'd love to say to your rich and be like, oh, I've got a perfect life, become a minimalist and you're gonna live a perfect life. But I still struggle with a lot of things. And I've got my own battles that I'm fighting. And my parents, I finally was able to see like,

oh, they've got their own shit going on. They've got their own battles that they're fighting. And they're still fighting them to this day. And I'm really glad I don't have those battles. However, understanding that like, I'm 39 years old. I'm for all intents and purposes, just as confused as they were at 32 years old. And seeing that in them really helped me drop those,

you know, poor me, why me? Why didn't they, they should have. It really helped me drop a lot of know, poor me, why me? Why didn't they, they should have, it really helped me drop a lot of that. Right, right, right. And that those behaviors aren't necessarily a referendum on how much they loved you or didn't love you, right? Absolutely. But just their own personal limiters.

I mean, when I think about when I was 30, I was a disaster. Yeah, me both. Yeah, I definitely felt like it at the time though, growing up, you know, like if you loved me, you'd stop drinking sort of thing, right? Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I think it,

Ryan and I grew up in similar sort of situations. I would argue his situation was far worse than mine in many respects. No way. Let's battle right now. The SWAT team never raided my home. Oh yeah, that's true. All right, you got me. It's heavy.

But what I'll say is that like Ryan saw the party and growing up as a fun thing. He saw his mom in particular having fun with drugs and alcohol. I saw my mother being depressed with drugs and alcohol. I've never had a drink in my life because I saw the sort of terminus of this thing, right? Where Ryan saw what he thought was the terminus,

the excitement, the joy, the pleasure. It wasn't real joy. It was confusing joy with pleasure. Yeah, mom's house was like the party house. I mean, people would just pop in randomly at a pool and like fenced in backyard. Like it was an above ground pool. Yeah, but good times.

Right, exactly. But I bet that's all you needed and a bunch of drugs and alcohol. And yeah, everyone's having a good time. So it's fascinating to me that you guys have been friends, best friends since fifth grade. You're now in 10 years of doing this thing together. So you're in business together.

I've never seen you guys argue or act short with each other. You must have your moments. I mean, come on, right? But I mean, how do you take care of this relationship? Expose. How do you make sure that you guys are good with each other, right? It's gotta be challenging at times.

I think Josh is the most tolerant person I know. So he's just able to put up with all my crap. That's what it is. That's what it is. It has nothing to do with me. It's a joke. We have an acronym that we often talk about. Shout out to Patrick Roan who spurred the conversation

that we had the conversation with us that spurred this acronym. It's TARA, T-A-R-A. But if I really wanna understand someone, truly understand them, that's the sort of the process that I go through if I really wanna understand someone, truly understand them. It's that's the sort of the process that I go through of tolerating the person first, it's a weak virtue. And it's not gonna get you very far tolerance, right?

There's a, what is it? I 10, whenever we're driving and Ella's like acting crazy in the car, there's a sign that says museum of tolerance. And I always joke with her. The Robertson. That our car is the museum of tolerance whenever she's in the car, there's a sign that says museum of tolerance. And I always joke with her. The Robertson. That our car is the museum of tolerance whenever she's in the car.

The mobile museum of tolerance. Anyway, tolerate and then we go from there. You know, we take these steps, getting tolerance is a good first step. And then we move on to acceptance, respect and then we move on to acceptance, respect, and then ultimately appreciation. And Ryan and I have radically different beliefs. I'm trying to let go of those beliefs.

I don't think beliefs serve us very well, but that's a different conversation. We have the same values though. And because we have the same values, when we have different beliefs to get, so we get there via different paths, so to speak. We have different opinions, we have different personalities, we certainly have different preferences,

but I don't say, well, his preferences are right or wrong. I might think it at first, but like that's also my ego talking. And I don't wanna just tolerate his preferences. That's not gonna make for a good friendship, a good business relationship. By the way, it doesn't ever feel like a business. I mean, I don't think we had business paperwork.

It's about four years into the thing. Even now we don't have like, it's not, yeah, it's just, it's not something we think about that way. It, yeah, it's a business we employ some people, but we go beyond tolerance. We accept the fact that we're both gonna be different. I'm not trying to change you. It's not about, here's what you must do, right?

And then of course the respect thing, of course I respect your preferences. I don't always completely understand them, but that's okay. And ultimately, if you can get to that level where you actually appreciate the idiosyncrasies, then that's like full sort of detachment, not needing to change someone. Yeah, no, I think, and this goes for any relationship.

Like when, first off, if Josh comes to me with something, it's not accusatory. It's like something he wants to talk about. And when you approach a situation like that, you can interpret it a lot differently than like, oh, Josh is trying to shame me. Like, I never feel like he's trying to shame me. And I think that is where arguments come in. When people start to try and shame other people and that's, oh, Josh is trying to shame me. Like, I never feel like he's trying to shame me. And I think that is where arguments come in.

When people start to try and shame other people and that's, oh, you just shamed me. Now I'm gonna shame you. And now we're gonna trade shames back and forth. Where I try to be the Zen Buddhist that Josh is when it comes to confrontation. But sometimes I'll go to Josh with something and he'll be like, I know you don't mean to say it that way.

I think what you're trying to say is this. And I'm like, yeah, you're absolutely right. And so it's not, when I say it's Josh, it truly is. Like when he comes to me, it's absolutely non-confrontational. And if I go to him and I'm like accidentally being confrontational, he's able to like process it and be like,

I know Ryan's not being a jerk right now. So yeah, let's get to the root of what we're doing. That's some ninja shit though. It's really, it's hard to master that and have that kind of presence of mind to manage. It's really inspiring. Like, I mean, for me and my wife, like I really go out of my way to try

and have that approach with her. Again, I'm not perfect, but I do better. Every day I get a little better, I think. I used to be competitive, but that's like saying I used to be mentally ill. I was doing a sauna in Montana when we lived in Montana for five years as a accident. And a beautiful accident.

Some nice photos from that. Yes, we did it for the photos, did it for the gram. Did not do it for the gram. I don't think we even had Instagram. But anyway, I was in a sauna with an American Indian named Tom and he said, and there's like a basketball court right next to the sauna, it's the YMCA in Missoula.

And he ended up swimming and all this other stuff. And he goes, I don't understand you Americans. Like you have this idea of like, if in order for you to win, you have to lose. He's like, but where I come from, if you win, he wins. And if he loses, you lose. And I, of course, my first knee jerk reaction to that

was like, that's a silly way to think about life because I'm winning, right? And it's like, well, no. You just haven't won enough. That's your problem. Yeah, but even think about that. We talk about like winning, you know, obviously Charlie Sheen is sort of the parodic exaggeration

of that, right? But that's, it's not far off from how our culture is, right? And we talk about winning as though it's a good thing, but by default, if someone wins, someone else has to lose. Now maybe it's a semantic thing and we can change our language around it. But I think language is really important. I think it's a real big problem too.

But I think our language, it canvases our days, right? Language is responsible for more misery than anything else in human history. Well, that idea, I mean, the most successful people I know, maybe not all of them, but I know a lot of successful people who do approach the world with that idea of largesse, that it's not a zero sum game.

And if I win, you win too. And not only are you able to basically succeed in whatever it is that you're trying to do, those people tend to be much happier people and grounded and more conscious in general. You had the Tom's guy on recently, Blake. Yeah, Blake. He strikes me as that.

He's definitely someone like that. I also had Karamo from Queer Eye on, and he was talking about the audition process for Queer Eye. And they were like, you know, they spent like years trying to find like the five dudes or whatever, or the four dudes that do the show. And most of the guys were super competitive and they'd go in and audition and then they come out

and the other guys would be like, what did they ask you? What happened? And they'd be like, they wouldn't say, cause they're like, I'm competing against you. I'm not gonna tell you any secrets. But there were a couple of them that would come out and be like, here's what happened. Here's what you need to look out for.

And those were the guys that ultimately all ended up getting chosen for the show, which obviously changed their lives and the lives of a lot of people that watch that show, which is cool, right? Like I love that idea. Makes me think of like Google, when they hire people,

they like bring them on a bus and then like whether or not they think the bus driver is like a huge, it's like a litmus test. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's interesting. Like how do you behave when no one's watching? Cause in this context,

there were casting people who are paying attention to this behavior. And it's like, we want people that, you know, approach the world with that kind of, you know, arms outstretched perspective of gratitude and giving. Amen. And to reward that. Yeah.

We were talking about Dave Ramsey earlier, but he was team. They interview the spouse in one of the interviews. It's a rather rigorous process, but your spouse gets interviewed as well, like separately. And it's fascinating to me because I think maybe they're like trying to figure out, how do you handle conflict? How do you make decisions?

How do you make some of your biggest life choices? Are they congruent with the person that we want to hire? Now I can imagine that might be a train wreck for some people, but I know if you interviewed Bex, like I would totally get the job, no matter what the job was. How do you know what she's gonna say? You think you know.

Let's talk a little bit more about the movie. I mean, I came into this thinking, these guys have been working on this thing for years because I know how long ago it was when I was there at that event. But you are featuring these individuals, the kind of everyday people, minimalist people that are highlighted in the movie.

And they're on Zoom calls. So I was like, well, clearly you're executing this project like during the pandemic. The pandemic was the best and worst thing that happened to this film. So we had this entire day set up in Los Angeles. We had a whole crew booked. We had location and we were bringing,

I don't know what it was, 22 or 32 people and to be interviewed that day. The majority of them were these everyday minimalists. In fact, I think it was a two day shoot. Early or mid March. Of course, you know what happened. Right at the beginning, the starting line of the whole thing.

Yeah, but the original thing that we wanted to do was, have you seen YouTube reaction videos and people sort of react to a music video or they react to a product or service or something. I might've seen one or two of those. Yeah. So like we kind of wanted to do that, but with minimalism in a way, like, and so it was Chris's idea. Chris is our director of photography on the film. And so that actually worked out better by, by bringing us sort of into their homes in a way. In fact, we had them do some B roll of some of their houses

that shows up in the film as well. So you get to see the sort of decluttering process they went through. Some of them even had footage that they took when they simplify their life, you know, a year or two ago. And we got to include all of that in the film, even though we filmed the rest of it. Yeah, well, it gives it in addition to this Verite touch,

like it's heartwarming because it's so authentic. You know, it's like they're actually shooting it themselves and sharing it as opposed to a sterilized film crew coming in and trying to make everything look just so. Right, we sent them cameras and stuff. So it looked like congruent with each one didn't feel like it was out of place but yeah, it was them doing the thing on their own.

Yeah. We got most of the cameras back. I'm just kidding. We'll get them all back. More stuff. Talk to me about some of the other experts that you have featured in here because it's an interesting grouping of people.

In addition to Dave Ramsey, you've got TK Coleman, who I know, you know, he was on your podcast not that long ago, Annie Leonard from Greenpeace, Denae Barahona from Simple Families. So she's kind of in, you know, squarely in the minimalist space, it feels like, but it was intriguing, like, oh, this person from Greenpeace, like she's about sustainability,

but you know, I was interested in how you made these choices. She was the, she did the story of stuff, if you recall. She's the lady who did that video. I mean, it's been seen a million times at this point. It's weird, cause I saw her and I was like, she looks really familiar and I couldn't point, there's an actress that looks kind of like her as well, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Yeah, yeah. So she's an executive director of Greenpeace USA. And yeah, so we wanted sort of, there are five, we only wanted five experts in the film and we wanted sort of them from these different perspectives. So one was the environmental side of things. There's obviously overlap with all of them.

We wanted the economic side of things. So TK Coleman, he is an education director at FEE. We had Dave Ramsey as sort of the money side of things, the debt, especially how it's tied to consumerism. Denae Barahona, she runs an organization called Simple Families and really focused on parenting and kids. And so we wanted to bring the family side in there as well.

And then we had Erwin McManus, who is a pastor here in Los Angeles, who probably was, it's hard to pick a favorite, but he had some of my favorite lines in the entire film. He's an interesting dude. Wasn't he like a fashion designer or something like that? He has his whole other, he's like a designer. He does all this other stuff.

Yeah, and he still does. He just launched a new like super minimalist clothing line. And he talks about intentional living in ways that they're just really profound. And I was just really grateful to have that opportunity to sit with him. He's been on our podcast a couple of times too. TK has been on our podcast.

I think you've been on there the second most. TK has been on there maybe like eight times. In fact, if I can introduce you to anyone, TK will blow your socks off. The best person you could speak to about just about anything, but especially like- But I'm unclear on his, like, so he's in education, but I'm unclear about the nexus

between that and minimalism. So he was sort of our economy expert in a way. And he, I wanted to juxtapose, you could call him a capitalist, all that word doesn't really mean what you would, it's taken on a pejorative frame in the last five, 10 years. But I wanted to juxtapose Annie,

who has probably radically different beliefs from TK and show that they overlap and literally overlapped in the film together. And even though they disagreed about some things where she talks about growth and infinite growth, and then he immediately sort of rebuts that by talking about, I don't think the problem is growth. And he goes into what he thinks the problem is.

And so we wanted some opinions that, we didn't want it to be like the yes man show, right? I wanted to learn something from these people. And Erwin, he really helps solidify the theme of the film. You know, it's a film as Ryan said earlier about starting over. He has a line in there about the shaking the Etch-a-Sketch thing that Ryan talked about. But that, we should all, we all have the,

not should, there's no should. We all have the opportunity. I like how you caught yourself there. Here's the problem I have is like, I keep setting these things down like the shoulds. And then, but I have the pattern. I pick them back up repeatedly. We all have the opportunity though,

to restart our lives, to start over. And this film was about starting over with less. And that can be less stuff, but it can also be less distractions, fewer commitments, et cetera. I love that. Yeah. What is the main idea that you want people to take away

from the film? I mean, I think Josh said it, it's about starting over. I mean, is this film for every single person? I think every single person will get something out of it, but I think who it's going to help the most is someone who's in a situation right now and they need some emotional leverage to start over. I think this film will help them do that.

Just the nudge they need. Yeah. I think that, I think some people, I don't think the film is for everyone as Ryan just said, but it's for anyone who's sort of dissatisfied by the status quo, whatever status quo they've created for themselves. We're overburdened, right?

And a lot of that has to do with stuff. But I think it also has to do with toxic relationships. I think it has to do with debt. There are all these burdens, we've taken them on, we've picked up all this baggage, but we can also set it down. It might take some time to set it down, especially with that.

In the first film, in Minimalism, I talked about I had almost half a million dollars worth of debt. I was making 200 grand a year in Dayton, Ohio, but I was spending like 220 grand a year, whatever they would let me spend. And so I had massive amounts of debt as a result. And I had to sort of set that burden down. It took some time, but you know, the best way to do that is to stop spending, right?

To stop whatever excess is going on. We can't add our way to contentment, to joy, to peace. It's always about subtraction. The timing is very interesting because we're all at home. And I think with that comes a natural inclination to do a little bit of inventory, you know, on how we're living our lives and what is our relationship to our job, to our profession,

when you're not going into an office every day or into a workplace in the manner in which you're accustomed to, that interruption of the flow or the routine, I think is triggering a lot of people to be more reflective about how they're spending their time and their resources, et cetera. So to the point about like the nudge or the, you know,

the kind of the gentle, you know, push towards these ideas, I feel like people are primed for this now. And it is a moment of radical change. You know, everybody's like, or not everybody, but you know, a lot of people are thinking about this in terms of when are we gonna get back to the way it was. It's not going back to the way it was. We are forever altered.

Some things will normalize to a certain extent, but the idea that everyone's gonna migrate back into office buildings, I think is lunacy. Like that's not gonna happen. We've now figured out how to pursue livings from Zoom and these tools that we have. So what does that look like down the line? And how can we reflect on this to reform our relationship

with the outside world so that it can be healthier and it can be more fulfilling and more purposeful. And the movie really speaks to that in a profound way. And I think it's gonna help a lot of people. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Normal wasn't working for a lot of us.

And this gave us the opportunity to realize that. It was a forced pause for many of us, even for me and Ryan. We had a whole tour planned this year and the film was gonna come out earlier, et cetera. And we had a bunch of speaking things we were gonna do. There aren't corporations that are meeting, so we couldn't go speak at these places. And so it was a pause for us as well,

but it's not to take away either what is, what some people are faced with. My brother, he is back in Ohio. He works in a factory. He worked in a factory building cabinets. It was a well-paying job and he was talented and skilled. And he was doing that. That whole thing shut down. It's not coming back.

He went and got part-time job at Amazon so he could pay, you know, feed his daughters. And now he's working third shift at a meatpacking plant because that's like his only reality, right? And that's how he, and talk about one of the most difficult jobs you could have and doing a third shift no less. But so a lot of people are affected by this. And so, well, I don't want to go back to where we were. I also don't wanna see more suffering. And so I think what's happening right now is

Ryan and I for the last decade have been asking this question. What is essential? And now a lot more people are all of a sudden asking. In fact, the terms even out there, essential worker, right? But what is essential in my home? What is essential in my life? What is essential on my calendar?

What is essential? And that's what I hope to illuminate with this film. How people ask that question, what is essential? I think that's a good place to put a pin in it for now. So you guys come back next time. Rich, I love you, brother. Thank you so much. You guys too.

I have so much love for you guys as people and respect for this mission that you've shouldered for the world. You guys are great servants to humanity and it's a privilege to talk to you. So thank you. Right back at you, brother. Wind in your sails, my friend.

Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. Before we sign off, where's the best place for people to learn more about you guys? Where would you like them to connect? In addition to obviously checking out Less is More on Netflix.

And also if you didn't see it the first time around minimalism, the original movie. Well, Ryan has an only fans he just started. That, I am so here for that. You said you wouldn't say a word about that unrichest podcast. Audience supported. Right, so many people adore me. Talk about minimalism. All right That's right. So many people adore me.

Talk about minimalism. All right. Just theminimalists.com. You can find our podcast, books, films, everything else. It's all in one hub, theminimalists.com. Nice. Cool. Thanks, you guys.

Thank you. Peace. See you. Bye. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show. To learn more about today's guest, Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show. To learn more about today's guest,

including links and resources related to everything discussed today, you can visit the episode page at richroll.com. And you can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at Rich Roll. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

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Peace, plants, namaste. Thank you.