The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - #131: Michael's Master List - Routines, Book Recs, Productivity Tools, Wellness & Supplement Products, Tech Tools, Fitness Routines, & Intermittent Fasting

Episode Date: August 21, 2018

On this episode Michael does a solo episode and creates his master list. This is a list of recommendations for products, routines, and productivity tools that Michael has used to enhance and improve his life. All of these products have been tested and used for months and years and now Michael is listing the standouts. He also dives into book recommendations for mindset, depression, entrepreneurs and entertainment as well as what his diet and fitness routine looks like.  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 20,000 courses. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for just 99 cents. That’s right, Skillshare is offering The Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just 99 cents. To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com/skinny.  This episode is brought to you by FOUR SIGMATIC We have been drinking this company's mushroom-infused elixirs and coffees for over a year now. When we need a break from coffee but still need that extra morning jolt and focus the Mushroom Coffee with Lion's Mane and Chaga is the way to go. Lauryn also drinks the Mushroom Matcha which is a green tea designed as a coffee alternative for those of you who want to cut back on caffeine without losing focus and cognitive boosts. This stuff doesn't actually taste like mushrooms, it's delicious. All of these blends have a ton of nutrients and amino acids to give you balanced energy without the jitters. To try FOUR SIGMATIC products go to foursigmatic.com/skinny and use promo code SKINNY for 15% off all products. 

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, one of our favorite companies and favorite sponsors. We have interviewed Taro, the founder of Four Sigmatic on this show and had to bring the brand on as a partner. Four Sigmatic specializes in superfoods, medicinal mushrooms, and adaptogenic herbs, and they make drinking mushrooms and superfoods delicious and easy to do with their mushroom coffees, mushroom superfood blends, and mushroom elixirs. If you are looking for a coffee alternative to switch up your caffeine intake, Four Sigmatic has the blends for you. They're all delicious. I love pretty much all of them.

Just open a pack and add to hot water. They all taste great. They don't taste like mushrooms. And like always, we have a special offer just for him and her listeners. Go to foursigmatic.com forward slash skinny and enter promo code skinny at checkout for 15% off your entire order. This episode is also brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 20,000 courses. We are currently using the platform to learn a number of different skills. Many of the members on our team are using it to learn Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Adobe Audition. So this is a tool for brands and individuals to acquire new skills or take novice skills to an expert level. Think of it as the

Netflix for learning skills. So join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners. So get two months of Skillshare for just 99 cents. That's right, very affordable. Skillshare is offering all skinny confidential him and her listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just 99 cents. To sign up, go to Skillshare.com slash Skinny. Again, go to Skillshare.com slash Skinny to start your two months of learning now. That's Skillshare.com slash Skinny. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for

some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. This one is going to be different. I think this is the first, actually I know, this is the first time that I have ever done a solo episode, and it's been a long time coming. I've been meaning to do it for a very long time. Lauren's been beating me up. A lot of you have been beating me up, and now we're here. It's time, live. It's really strange.

It's a lot quieter here without my counterpart squawking in my ear and putting me in my place, keeping me under control. So hopefully this thing doesn't get out of control. So I thought a lot about this episode, like a lot. And I know Lauren did a master list a while back and this will be very similar. So the major differences here for my master list

is that there will probably not be as many beauty and wellness questions Lauren typically gets the majority of those and even though I tend to think that I like some beauty and wellness things I'm definitely not an expert in that area and I'm sure many of you would turn this off or fall asleep if I got into my very minimal beauty routine. Even though, you know, it has increased over the course of the last two years since we've been interviewing more and more doctors and skin experts and wellness experts.

So I have gotten better, hence why my face has not fallen off and I don't look like an old weathered saddle anymore because I've picked up a couple of tips along the way, but still not nearly the wealth of knowledge that my wife and counterpart is. So this will be more about productivity hacks, tech hacks, tech tools that I use, books. A lot of you request a lot of book recommendations and we haven't really done a full episode on those.

So this one will be a deep dive into some books that I recommend, routine recommendations. I will also do my best to provide information all around the different resources and tools and products and life hacks that I've found to work for me over the course of my life. It's also worth mentioning here, if this is not already apparent to you guys after this much time, that I am not an expert in many of these fields. The primary reason for doing a lot of this podcast is so that I can bring experts on with Lauren to learn about the tools that they use so that we can apply them to our life. And I really like that was one of the core reasons behind doing this podcast outside of also providing you guys,

the listeners, that information as well. It's also because Lauren and I have been curious about the routines and practices and tools and resources that a lot of the top performers in the world use. And so a lot of this is stuff that I've learned throughout this podcast or throughout my own life. And while I am not an expert, many of these experiences that I've had and tools that I've used have led to positive experiences for my life and success in certain areas in my life. So if I can share some of this stuff with you guys and you guys can get a benefit from it, happy to do that and excited to do that. So sorry if this episode jumps around a bit.

A lot of this stuff intersects into my life and days in numerous ways. So trying to consolidate it all in one place, all in one constant flow of thought pattern is a bit challenging, but I've done my best. So bear with me. Don't beat me up too bad. So I think a good place to start is with some of my regiments or routines or habits. I would say I'm not somebody that sticks to a specific habit or routine day after day after day. A lot of us, I'm sure I'm not the only one, get overwhelmed by all of these different routines and habits, crazy morning routines and workout routines, lists, schedules. You listen to 10 different podcasts or read 10 different blogs or listen to 10 different speakers and all of a

sudden you have 40 or 50 different things on a list that you need to do for your morning and it becomes overwhelming. So I'm somebody that has maybe picked the best pieces of some of those pieces of advice to apply to my life. But I would say that my routines jump around a little bit and I'm sure many of you are like that. And a lot of it is dependent on the mood that I'm in or the place I'm at in my life or the goals that I'm trying to accomplish. You know,

I'm constantly experimenting and changing routine. And while I have my foundations, and I'm dedicated to certain things and certain practices, I definitely don't stick to the same thing day after day after day. but there are recurring themes and recurring practices and habits that I constantly go back to. But like many of you, I need constant stimulation. I think this is what sometimes throws Lauren off and sometimes, you know, she says I'm a little crazier, I'm a little turbo. It's because I'm constantly changing things up and it's because I'm somebody that needs to try a lot of different things to find something that I really like. You know, if I'm in a bad mood or something or I'm in a sad mood or something when I wake up in the morning,

I need to do different things to get me out of those moods. I'm sure many of you can relate. And if I'm in a good mood and I just want to do things that keep me in that mood, you know, sometimes the routine will be a lot lighter and I can just kind of jump out and get going. But like many of you, I'm somebody that if I am in one of those bad or grumpy or sad or overwhelmed or anxious moods, I need to do different things to get myself out of that so that I can get back to those good moves. Okay, so I'm going to give you some of the tools, books, products, resources, and habits that have worked for me. And I suggest that you experiment,

see what works for you. But if you're like me and you find yourself sticking to a specific habit or routine every day, getting bored, don't think you're alone and don't think you can't find new habits and new routines to find success for yourself because I'm an example of someone who lives very chaotically and has found some success. And just remember, as Jerry Weintraub, who's one of my favorites and also has a great book, once remember, as Jerry Weintraub, who's one of my favorites and also has a great book, once said, as soon as you feel comfortable, that's when it's time to start over. My typical morning routine looks like this. Typically, I wake up and I have some water with lemon. Yes, Lauren, you're going to claim credit for this, and she probably deserves

it. Lauren got me drinking water and lemon every morning first thing when I wake up. Actually, second thing, because I tongue scrape first. Thank you, Sahar Rose, for coming on here and teaching me about that. Anybody that's not tongue scraping, get on that. It helps. I feel much better after doing it. I don't know if that's a placebo or I actually do feel better, but I tongue scrape

and then I have some water with lemon. Doesn't take long at all. Then I really do my best in the mornings to not look at my phone at all for at least the first hour that I'm up. Sometimes I fail at this, like many of us do, but I really do try my hardest to at least 80% of the time not look at my phone or any electronics.

I feel like that sets the pace for your day when you jump right into your inbox, right first things first. So I try to ignore it for the first hour that I'm up. Then I feed the dogs. They're up, you know, early in the morning. They are running around. They're squeaking toys. They're doing anything to get my attention. And this is also my secret. This is a side note to become the dog's favorite person in the household, right? The favorite parent. Men, if you're

listening, this also works for women. If you want to become a favorite, feed them, take care of them, and you're on your way to a healthy relationship. Lauren is still fast asleep at this time. I usually get up a little bit earlier than her. I have a little time to myself. It's quiet. Nobody's around except me and the dogs. Depending on my mood, I will meditate for about 15 to 20 minutes. I'm just in the last eight months getting into meditation. If you listen to some of the early episodes, you'll hear me say it didn't work for me as well, but I have been getting better over the last eight months. I've read a couple of books on it and I was introduced to Headspace. So I started doing that and this helps me. But if I'm in a good mood, and this is what I mentioned earlier about depending the mood I'm in, I typically skip

this. Some serious meditators may disagree with this, but at this stage of my life, I'm mostly using meditation to get my mind back on track. So if I'm, you know, out of it or feeling a little sluggish or slow, or, you know, maybe I'm not in the happiest of moods, like many of us are in the morning, I tend to meditate to try to get my head right and get with my thoughts. But like I said, if I'm feeling good, a lot of time I don't need it and I just kind of jump into my day. Maybe that will change as I get deeper into the practice, but for now, that's how it is. Then, and I think this is the most important part for me and maybe a form of meditation, I read for 30 minutes to an hour depending on what my schedule looks like and how much time I have.

It could be anything. It could be a newspaper. It could be a book. It could be a novel. It could be a website, a blog, anything where you're reading to get your mind stimulated and to get the juices in your brain flowing. I don't know if that's correct to say juices, but that's what I do. Get the creativity flowing, kind of get the mind working, get my thoughts going. And while I'm reading, I'm typically having a black coffee or ice coffee with classical music in the background. I know, very elevated. I'm so elevated. There's a playlist that I listen to on Apple Music called The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. That's a mouthful. And they have all the greatest classical pieces. And I feel like, I don't know, maybe this is another placebo thing, but I feel like this gets my brain moving. I feel smarter. I like it. It's

kind of relaxing. It gets me in a mood where I feel like I can start working for the day. And you're listening to the greatest pieces of all time and getting inspired and stimulated. So I like to do that. I'm also, if you've noticed, I'm not eating yet, which we will get into later over the last, I would say the course of my life I've been doing this, but it wasn't until the last two or three years that I realized I've been doing

what's called intermittent fasting for a long period of time in all this football. So I'll get into that later in this episode. If I'm not drinking coffee, which I have been tending to do lately, just because I have some adrenal gland issues and need a break from the stuff. I love coffee, but sometimes I just need a break. And lately, as mentioned previously on a lot of our podcasts, I have been subbing in Four Sigmatic products in place of the coffee.

So for those of you that are regular listeners of the show, you know that Four Sigmatic is also a sponsor of the coffee. So for those of you that are regular listeners of the show, you know that Four Sigmatic is also a sponsor of the show. So here are a couple of the products that I take in the morning in place of the coffee when I need to take that coffee break. The first one and the product that originally turned me on to Four Sigmatic is their Mushroom Coffee with Lion's Mane and Chaga. I know I talk about this stuff a lot and some of you may be sick of hearing it, but this stuff really does work. It's like rocket fuel for the brain and if you do get those coffee jitters and you don't want to have you know like that coffee come down and you need to take a break this stuff is great you don't get the jitters you just get pure focus pure energy you know open a pack add it to hot water

really really easy to do and it really gives you that great pick-me-up. I also, if I don't need the energy and I don't want to take that extra caffeine boost, I use the Lion's Mane Elixir, which comes in the orange box, and that's purely for focus. So a lot of the time, if I'm feeling good, I'm feeling awake, I will use the Lion's Mane Elixir instead. This stuff is also really good for those of you, like me, who need to travel because they come in individually measured out packets. So you can throw them in your bag. You can use them when you need them. I also bring them to the office. So, you know, a lot of offices, including many of the offices that you guys work at or work within

have those coffee machines. I actually, side note, almost got in a fistfight with our coffee machine the other day. I don't know what the hell was wrong with this thing. I won't even mention the brand because it's so bad. I almost threw it against the wall. And like I said, if you need to switch it up, we bring these into the office. So anybody that's in the office can try these out. We have all the different elixirs, the ones for focus, some of the pick-me-ups. So they're great again for a coffee alternative and also to throw in your bag if you're bringing them into the office. On the other side of the spectrum, and I use this a lot for the evening, which we'll get into, they also have elixirs for winding down and they have elixirs for sleep, like their reishi mushroom blends. Lauren and I take the hot cacao mix when we want to get really good night's sleep.

That stuff really knocks you out and relaxes you. And we both swear by the stuff. So as you know, they are a sponsor of this show and this episode is also sponsored by them. But honestly, they would be on this list even if they weren't. I tell everyone about the products. If you do want to take advantage of the show offer we have, go to foursigmatic.com forward slash skinny and enter promo code skinny for 15% off. Again, go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny and enter promo code skinny for 15% off. After I have had my drink, I've, it sounded like an alcohol beverage. After I've had like my morning drink, I will typically do 30 minutes of important emails. And when I say important, and I have that starred here on my notes, I tend to just get to the things

that need my immediate attention right away. Because again, this is only a 30 minute window of time that I'm taking in the morning to kind of set the day. So I ignore the ones that I can save for later. I batch my email, which we've talked about in the past, and I just get to the important ones. And then I try and do 30 to 45 minutes of working out, which I'll also talk about later in this episode, what those routines look like. And I try to do this at least three to four times a week. I've done this consistently for a very long time. It doesn't need to be some massive workout or something crazy, just something to get the body moving. And then after I follow it by a long shower, Lauren always says I'm doing weird things in the shower. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not. But I think a long shower is a luxury in life, and I try to do a long shower,

maybe 10 minutes long, hot and cold, switching back and forth, and I'm one of those people that if I don't have a shower in the morning, I just feel funky the rest of the day, and I can't get going, so yeah, so that's pretty much my morning routine before I head out the door.

Now let's take a little bit of a turn and get into some of the lists, so like Lauren's episode, her master list, this one will be very similar. I've created lists here in different categories and Lauren asked me to start with, and I hope this is relevant to you guys, with kind of my wellness sleep products and routines. So I've kind of categorized everything in here that I use for beauty wellness sleep, if you can call it beauty. My number one here, and I use this for sleep, and I get a lot of questions about this. So I'll just mention it again here. It's a $10 item you

can get on Amazon. I use it every single day of the year, every single day of the week, every single day. It's a weird name. It's called the Lone Froat Sleep Mask. And I've talked about this before, but honestly, I swear by it. It's a sleep mask that goes over your eyes. It has a little thin Velcro strap in the back. It goes over, it's soft. And unlike other sleep masks that kind of rub against your eyelids and bother you and feel cumbersome, this one has these fly eyes that allow for absolute blackout. It feels like, you know, when Lauren's watching TV or housewives, if I have my noise canceling headphones on and I have these things on, I can literally stare at the TV and not see any light. So it really is,

it keeps pitch black. And ever since I started using this, I've been getting amazing sleep. I think this, you know, has something to do with our ancestors out there sleeping under the stars in the total darkness. We have so much stimulation now with lights and keyboards and, you know, has something to do with our ancestors out there sleeping under the stars in the total darkness. We have so much stimulation now with lights and keyboards and, you know, computer screens and phone screens and whatnot. All this artificial light is not good for sleep. And every sleep expert that we've had here on the show and everybody that we've listened to says that you need to get electronics away at night and get into some darkness. So this sleep mask does it for me. It's my favorite. Again, it's a weird name. It's called Lone Frote Mask. That's L-O-N-E-F-R-O-T-E

Mask. And it's super cheap on Amazon. The next ones, I know a lot of you've been asking about my skincare routine, which is funny for me to even say because two and a half years ago, I knew nothing about skin, had never done any skincare routines in my life, never was taught about it, never grew up washing my face or doing any of that stuff. Like a lot of men, I'm sure that if there's men listening and, or if there's wives and girlfriends listening with their men in the, in the car or the bathroom, they'll tell you the same thing. It's just not something that a lot of men grew up being taught about, which is taking care of their skin. And you know, you'd have to be an idiot at this point if you're me after having so many experts and doctors on to not have, you know, some care for your skin. And a lot of people ask me now, how do you, like they ask Lauren,

how did you get Michael to take care of his skin? Well, it's like, like I said, you would have to be a fucking idiot at this point if you're me and have talked to so many experts and learned about it and not taken some steps. So don't beat the men in your life up too bad. They probably have not been taught. They probably don't know. Men, if you're listening or girls, if you're listening, tell your men that once I did start doing this, I cannot stop doing it. It's just the same thing as, you know,

washing your hands or combing your hair or brushing your teeth. It takes me two to three minutes in the morning and it makes all the difference. And I really have noticed my skin. I have inherently dark circles under my eyes. I don't know if that's sleep or if that's genetics or if that's diet. But ever since I started doing some of these skin practices, those circles have gone down by at least 80%. And my skin just feels brighter. Some would even say I may be glowing. So the products that I swear by, again, not to overwhelm people, Dr. Dennis has some products. One of them is the vitamin C serum. I throw this on after the shower, as well as the vitamin C

collagen and brighten eye cream. I use that for my dark circles. I also use the SPF 50 sunscreen from Dr. Dennis every day. That stuff is great. And like I said, after talking to him, now I swear by sunscreen, at least on the face. I also use some of his moisturizers. They're always great. And some of my other favorite moisturizers are some that Kate Somerville, who is also on this show, gave me some of her moisturizers and those seem to work really well for me as well. I use whatever face wash Lauren has in the shower and that she recommends. So those are kind of switching up constantly and I'm sure many of you already know those products. So moving on. Also, we've talked about a tongue scraper. I use these. You can get them off Thrive Market, another one of our sponsors. I use it every morning. And the hair, finally the hair.

And I hate to talk about this because as this show has grown, it's been one of my biggest fears that I would share some of these hair products and not be able to get them. Emily, if you're listening, Emily's my assistant, please stock us up just in case. I use two different products.

I use Redken Rough Paste, which is kind of the hybrid between a gel and a pomade and then I also use or obey products depending on how long my hair is sometimes it gets really long and unruly like right now I need to go get a hair cut soon and I need some stuff that's a little bit stronger but yeah I tend not to like gels and those things that make your hair really hard I know a lot of time my hair looks like it's greased up with axle grease and really hard, but you can still run your fingers through it. And that's important to me because I think it looks a little strange when it's like this rock hard mess that you can't touch. And it's

also annoying. Some colognes that I use, you know, for all the guys out there want to smell good on your dates for the ladies. I use some by Beredo. I think I'm saying that right. B-Y-R-E-D-O. And I use some Tom Ford cologne, depending on if it's evening or day. I know that sounds fancy, but I tend to switch it up a little bit. And of course, in the bedroom, Lauren will never forgive me if I don't mention this. And also, ladies, if you're out there listening, we use Woo for Play. You've heard us talk about this before. This is a personal organic lubricant that me and my partners developed. And honestly, this stuff is a game changer in the

bedroom for the women that are listening. I don't know what else to say besides it's a game changer. Use it alone, use it with a friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you want to do. Doesn't matter to me. But know that whenever Lauren gets this stuff out, I know what time it is and I'm excited. And every one of my friends and every one of her girlfriends that we Lauren gets this stuff out, I know what time it is and I'm excited. And every one of my friends and every one of her girlfriends that we've introduced this stuff to says it is a go-to and a must. For this one, again, obviously, since we own the product, we have an offer for you. If you go to wooforplay.com and enter promo code him and her, you get a little discount there. And yeah, that stuff, it's got to be on the master list for sure. Some other wellness, I don't know if you call them beauty wellness routines that I do regularly

is I try to get massages at least once a week, one a week. And for me, it's a time that I can also just sit with my thoughts, get all of the tension pulled out. As some of you know, I'm somebody that would some way consider high strung or hyperactive. So I carry a lot of tension in my neck, upper neck, back. I'm sure many of you do as well. And I try to go and get a massage at least once a week. I skip the fancy spas and the fancy hotel spas.

And I go to a place where it could be a little hole in the wall, but the guys or girls in there know exactly what they do and what they're doing and they get the knots out. And so this for me is really important. One, it's kind of another meditation practice if you look at it like that, as well as some wellness. I think, you know, sitting with tension is really bad. And over time as an entrepreneur, I, you know, I didn't realize until about a year and a half ago how much tension that I sit with.

And so now I do my best to go and get that tension rubbed out of my neck and shoulders. And it's really helped with me, both with my mindset and my body. I think this is a good place because a lot of this stuff kind of segues into wellness routines for me. And that's tech and productivity tools that I use, because obviously these help with my mindset and help me get through my days. So let's start with, we'll just go down the list and these aren't in any particular order, not in most important to least important or anything. They're just what came to mind as I was creating this list. So first, and this is probably, actually this one could be at the top of the list. It's one of my most important, the Bose noise canceling headphones.

Listen, if you have a wife like mine, sometimes she gets a little chatty. She's pretty loud. She beats me up all the time. She's always clicking those fingers on the keys. It sounds like there's somebody that's, it sounds like she's trying to beat this computer to death. So these Bose noise canceling headphones have, and the Bluetooth ones, they got to be the Bluetooth ones that you don't have to attach with a cord, have probably saved my marriage multiple times because without them, I may have gone crazy. I use them on flights. I use them at night when Lauren's watching reality shows or if she's on her phone or on her computer. I use them when I need to concentrate, sometimes with that classical music, sometimes with just ambient sound in the background if I really need to focus.

I carry these in my bag all the time whenever we travel. Always have a pair. They're a little bit pricey. They come in about 300 bucks, but I've had my same pair now for two years and I use them daily. So, you know, think about it like this. It's less than a dollar a day for me to use something that I really like. Next, for those of you that are trying to manage your inbox like me, I have, you know, with the multiple companies, I have literally four email inboxes plus a personal one for all of the different businesses and organizations that we're part of. So as you can imagine, it gets a little bit crazy with the inbound. I use a tool called Boomerang, which is a Gmail plugin. I'm not sure if it works

for anything else, but I know it works for Gmail. And it's called Boomerang. And I use this to manage the inbox. Basically what it is, is if your inbox starts to get flooded, you can either schedule emails to go out later. You can use Boomerang to have one go out of your inbox. So literally you say, you know, get an email from somebody and you don't need to get to it right away, but you maybe need to get it to it in a day or two. You can schedule that email to go out of your inbox and then back when you need to give it some attention. You can also use it to, you know, sometimes I write a lot of emails on the weekend.

I'm recording this podcast on the weekend and I don't want to bother my partners or my coworkers, the people that I'm in business with on the weekend because I don't want to take their time. So what I'll do is I'll write the email, like today, for example, and then I'll use Boomerang to schedule it to go out at, say, 9 a.m. Monday morning, which is also great because it takes it out of your inbox. And you can also use this as kind of an email reminder system. A lot of and I'm on the go and instead of having a to-do list say I need to remember something I'll send myself an email and then use boomerang

to remind me when to do that task so boomerang is great the next one is and this is probably the most important tool that I use day to day and I'm using it right now it's called Evernote. For those of you that don't know about Evernote, you should know it is honestly a lifesaver. We use it for all of our different note takings. We use it to share notes with each other. Lauren and I use it to share podcast notes and podcast interview questions with each other. You can make to-do lists with it. You can copy articles from the internet to save for later and to read them. You can share to your Google Drive. It's just the ultimate note-taking system.

And I love it because it syncs in real time. So right now, I'm reading it on my computer. It's also synced with my home computer, the office computers, synced with my phone, iPad. So wherever I need the notes that I take throughout the day or the week, they're there. I honestly could not live without Evernote. For the solopreneurs out there, I used to use this tool all the time. It's called assistant.to. And again, this is another thing for your email inbox, but it's for scheduling. It's a plugin for scheduling. So back before I had an assistant, which I'm lucky enough to have now because my life's

gotten a little bit more chaotic, I used assistant.to. So, many of you guys don't have an assistant right now, which is fine. I didn't have one for a very, very long time, but I still needed to book appointments and have people book appointments with me. And this is a plugin that works with your calendar and your inbox. You literally, you hit assistant.to, you send an invite out and it lets whoever you're trying to schedule a meeting

or call with know your available times by reading your calendar. They select and it automatically schedules it. So for those of you that are trying to schedule conference calls or meetings and you don't want to go with the back and forth of trying to go through 50 emails to do it, use assistant.to.

Again, it's another plugin. There may be a fee with it, but it's minimal and definitely cheaper than a full-time person. Next, Google Calendar. Honestly, I don't even know a lot of the time what I'm doing anymore unless I look at my Google Calendar. Again, I have an assistant that helps me out, but even before then, I use Google Calendar for everything. And I love Google Calendar. Again, I have an assistant that helps me out, but even before then, I use Google Calendar for everything. And I love Google Calendar because you can read on your phone, you can read on your computer, read it anywhere, color coordinate it, share it with multiple people, share it with your organization, share it with your friends, send invites. Honestly, at this point in my life, if something is not in my Google Calendar, I'm probably not doing it.

And I get really strict with stuff like this now because I feel like what's not scheduled is not in my Google Calendar, I'm probably not doing it. And I get really strict with stuff like this now because I feel like what's not scheduled is not getting done. And I'll even use it for time for myself. So I don't just use it for scheduling with other people. A lot of times, I'll just take Google Calendar and block times for personal time. Maybe I have to work on a podcast or maybe I have some internal work. I will put private blocks of time that nobody can see but me. None of my team can see it. Nobody else can see it. Just me. Maybe it's work on this email or work on this business idea or work on this spreadsheet. Sometimes I even schedule time to read. That's how crazy I get with it. I think twice a day throughout my

calendar, it'll be an hour slot to read or 30 minutes to read. And these are times where people can look at this and they say, okay, at that time he's unavailable. And at these times they are. And honestly, it's probably if there was something at the top of the list, it would be Google Calendar. I just think it works the best. Next, Dropbox. Many of you are familiar with Dropbox. That's just what we use for file sharing. We use it for all the different podcasts, all the different graphics. Lauren uses it. I use it. The team uses it. Dropbox, that one doesn't need a lot of explanation. Next, for people that are not graphically savvy like myself that cannot create their own beautiful graphics but have to, the other day I had to put a presentation together for Dear Media,

for the entire team, to let them know what's going on in the podcast space, where I see it going, some analytics around it, some stats, what we see happening in the space. It was about an hour presentation, and I wanted to create some beautiful graphics in a spreadsheet using Google Slides. And I'm not a graphic artist, but I had a solution. And that is Canva, C-A-N-V-A dot com. So Canva is great. They come with a lot of stock images and a lot of different plugins that you can use to create beautiful graphics, infographics, social graphics,

memes, whatever you want to do. Canva is really great for somebody who's not an expert at Photoshop or design and just needs to get some beautiful graphics done. They won't be as perfect as a graphic designer, but they're much better than say clip art. And it's, you know, again, there may be a small fee associated with that, but you know, it's cheaper than hiring a graphic designer every time and you can get it done. I literally put together maybe 15 or 20 graphics the other day for this presentation and I did it in a day. So that just shows you someone like me who doesn't have any kind of Photoshop experience, how easy it is. For editing podcasts, we use GarageBand. If I'm doing it personally and I don't have one of our producers doing it, again,

I'm not the most technically savvy person, but GarageBand comes with the Mac. It's really easy to use. You can use something like Skillshare to learn how to do it. Speaking of Skillshare, Skillshare is one of our favorite sponsors. They sponsored this episode, but it is also a tool that I think is very applicable to this episode because it's something that we use all the time when we're trying to figure out new platforms. Say you want to learn how to use Evernote or assistant.to or After Effects or GarageBand or Adobe Edition, any of these skills that you want to implement into your regimen for the productivity tools that I'm recommending. Skillshare honestly has a class for you. There are more than 20,000 online courses taught by people like you and me. I've used it to learn After Effects. So has Taylor. Taylor's honestly become a master at After Effects. There's a ton of great people doing really

awesome courses. I'm actually thinking about doing one on podcasting soon. If you guys are interested in that, email me or DM me and let me know. Skillshare is basically the Netflix of learning with over, like I said, 20,000 courses online. This is a tool that I recommend to any entrepreneur, solopreneur, employee, anybody that's looking to up their game in the skillset area, anybody that's looking to add something new or a new platform to their repertoire. Go and want to impress your boss. You want to, you know, tailor when he learned After Effects, like he's literally carved himself out a whole new job within our organization and he's actually earning extra just because of it. He does a lot of Lauren's info graphics now, a lot of promotion graphics on her stories.

We help with her YouTube videos. So literally he used Skillshare to figure this out and I recommend it to anybody that's trying to add something new to their business. As we've gotten deeper into the podcasting world, I really want to learn Adobe edition. It's a little bit more complicated than GarageBand, but I think if I'm going to stay in this space, I need to not only be the CEO of the podcast network, but I need to know how every facet works, and I'd really like to understand the editing world a little bit more. So I'm going to start taking a course on Adobe Edition and Pro Tools, which is basically what pro editors use. I've been a novice editor for a long time, and Skillshare is going to get me there. So to join

the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a novice editor for a long time and Skillshare is gonna get me there. So to join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners, get two months of Skillshare for just 99 cents. That's right, Skillshare is offering the Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just 99 cents.

To sign up, go to skillshare.com slash skinny. Again, go to skillshare.com slash skinny to start your two months of learning now. That's skillshare.com slash skinny. Again, go to Skillshare dot com slash skinny to start your two months of learning now. That's Skillshare dot com slash skinny. Finally, last two productivity tools and platforms that we use Google Drive for everything for docs and sheets and slides. If you need to create spreadsheets and share with the team documents or slideshows, which are basically PowerPoint presentations, we use Google Drive. it's just the easiest thing that we've come by to share and then for me and this is you know I hate printing things out and I hate having

printers in the digital age sometimes you have to but I use PDF expert by read all so I use this for signing Doc signing ios for podcast agreements signing legal agreements it's basically just a PDF reader where you can sign everything digitally, date everything, edit, and I use that. And now let's not forget the most important piece of my tech repertoire. Many of you guys have seen me with these, the Apple AirPods. These are literally the best thing ever. Sometimes I feel like a cyborg walking around the office with these things in my head, but I believe they are just the beginning. They are the future. I couldn't recommend these things more that you forget that they're in. Sometimes I walk into meetings and conversations and still have them in and people think, hey, are you even

listening to me? I like them a lot because you can hear everybody talking around you, but you can also listen to your music. You can answer calls. You can listen to podcasts. And they are honestly the loves of my life next to Lorne. I would say it goes Lorne, then the AirPods. But it's a close second. In the music I'm usually jamming, you know, I'm a big music guy. One day it could be heavy metal. The next day it could be smooth jazz.

Another day it could be bossa nova or classical. Sometimes rap, hip-hop. Maybe I'm listening to Al Green or Sinatra. There was a quote I heard somewhere. It might have been from Henry Rollins. And he said, music is the only friend that never abandons you. It's never going to sue you, never going to screw you over. It's always going to be there for you. And music is definitely a huge part of my life. But like everything else, I'm a walking contradiction and I could have various different types of music at any given time, depending on the mood I'm in.

Okay, now for probably the most requested section of this podcast, book recommendations. Many of you guys have reached out for books, and I feel like I could do multiple podcasts just on book recommendations. But to keep it concise, I'll do a few here. And I'll start it out with a quote. Benjamin Franklin once said, we are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. And I believe in this. I think that if you don't read books, you don't have a lot of opportunity and that you're missing out on a ton of opportunity. Now with the rise of podcasts and the spread of information, maybe you can add some other things. But me, myself personally, I find the most interesting

people in life that I've intersected with people that are well-read, people that are well-read in multiple categories. I think the reason that I was, one of the reasons I was really attracted to Lauren is she's someone that allows me to read without bothering me. I'm somewhere like, if you left me in a cabin in the woods for a long period of time with books, I'd be fine. I wouldn't be lonely. Of course, I love my wife and I miss my wife, but I find that I've had a lot of escapism and a lot of joy throughout my life reading. And I was taught to read at a very young age. My dad was a big reader. And also what I find attractive about Lauren, for multiple reasons, but she is also a huge reader and sometimes we'll just sit in bed and read so let's get started I have the Kindle app and that's the app I use because it's plugged into my

Amazon downloaded on my phone iPad laptop I have actually have a physical Kindle but I like this because when I go to a waiting room or I'm sitting in line or I'm standing around instead of just you know standing there like a dull or just staring off into the distance I can read something and I find so many people you know they get on social media or they you know get standing there like a duller, just staring off into the distance, I can read something. And I find so many people, you know, they get on social media or they, you know, get in their email inbox and they waste time. I'm not guilty of that. I do that as well. But I try when I have downtime, say I'm waiting for the dentist, you know, I'll read instead of just surf the web. And some books that I keep on my Kindle apps and that I keep going back to, and these are just kind of like staples that I

keep. And these are not my full recommendations, but these are staples that I keep on all my devices are Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. That's a good book for managing anxiety. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Sometimes I just think that's a beautiful book and I just want to go there and take a load off. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This is for anybody that is procrastinating or wondering if they should take the leap in an artistic endeavor or an entrepreneurial endeavor.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is great and it's really easy to consume. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. He's my favorite Stoic and sometimes I'll just pop that open and read a passage. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Whenever you think you have it bad

or whenever you think your life's tough, read that book. He's a guy that went through the Holocaust and survived some of the camps and lived to write about it and it's just a beautiful book. Then taking a left turn, American Psycho by

Brett Easton Ellis. A lot of people really like that movie and I've heard plenty about that movie throughout my life, but the book is even crazier and it's wild and it's some really great writing. So I love that book. And sometimes again, I'll just flip that to a random passage. And then one book that is maybe the, maybe this has something to do with my style. Maybe why I slick my hair back. Maybe why I wear leather jackets and boots my whole life and converse. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, love that book. Remember reading it in seventh grade and falling in love with it, so I keep that book. And then one of my, two of my favorite books of all time, they're fiction books. One of them won the Pulitzer Prize. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, and that is a series, that's a, it's a series of books, but that one's the best one,

in my opinion. And Shogun, which is also a series. Shogun by James Clavel. So those are the ones I keep on my Kindle. Then another book recommendation going into the day. This is just one that I recommend. It's called The Daily Stoic. It's by Ryan Holiday. He's been on this show. It's just Stoic passages and quotes. Basically, he'll take passages from a Stoic by Seneca or Marcus Aurelius, and he will give you a bite-sized quote, and then he will interpret what that quote means and how you can apply it to your life. So I read a page or two of this in the morning or evening every now and then, and I actually use this sometimes in place of a journal.

Maybe I'll read a passage in his interpretation, and then I will write my interpretation and how it applies to my life. So again, I've gifted this. I think I gifted it a few Christmases ago to our entire family and I recommend it all the time. That's when to check out The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holliday. And he's been on this show as well, which was a great episode. For entrepreneurs or actually anybody that just wants to get into business. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. You could be anybody. These are some books that I recommend. The One Thing by Gary Keller. That is a great place to start. Purple Cow by Seth Godin. We've talked about it on this show. That one is really, really good. Mastery by Robert Greene. And I'm very excited to say that Robert

Greene will be joining us on the show very soon. Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger is one of my favorite people in the world. I'm inspired by him. He is Warren Buffett's lesser known partner, also a billionaire and just a really, really great mind and somebody that I look to often when I want to hear a funny quote or think about a problem. Sam Walton, Made in America, anybody that thinks they can't make it starting from nothing should read this book. He literally built Walmart from nothing up to what it is today. And also it's funny, there's a book that, and it's not on this list, but maybe it should be about Jeff Bezos. And he ends the book with a quote by Sam Walton. And the quote was basically saying, do you think, it was asking Sam Walton

if he thought anyone else could do this in the future. And basically, Bezos is taking a lot of the formula and principles that Sam Walton used to build Amazon. So a lot of correlation there. And that's a great book, Sam Walton, Made in America. Another book, this one's like a punch in the face, a gut punch, it just gets you going. Relentless by Tim S. Grover. Tim,

I want you on this show. If you're ever listening, I know Lauren and I are beating you up. Get on this show. Relentless by Tim S. Grover. And I know this one for entrepreneurs may feel like a left turn, may feel a little bit out there, but Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is kind of a biography, but if you look at Arnold's life and you look at the accomplishments that he's had, you know, starting moving up to America as an immigrant, becoming, you know, a self-made millionaire before he made money in acting, becoming the greatest bodybuilding champion of all time, becoming the governor of the state of California, marrying into the Kennedy family. This is a wild life, right? Like you, for someone

to accomplish all these things, they have to be doing something right. I read his biography and was blown away. There's a lot of really great lessons and principles in that book. It's a long book, but again, very entertaining, really amazing. Check that one out. For Focusing, Deep Work by Cal Newport. This is a book about, again, stopping procrastination and focusing. And this is one that I would not skip. And this one could be for mindset and for entrepreneurs. It's probably recommended by every major entrepreneur in the world. And it's been around for forever. But it really, there is a reason. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. There's a secret in that book that you have to read to get. I won't ruin it for anybody. But

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Next category of books, and I'm trying to get through these. Hopefully, this is not boring any of you. When you're feeling down, when you're feeling like, you know, a little lethargic, feeling a little depressed, these are some books for you. Man's Search for Meaning, I talked about this a little bit before, by Viktor Frankl. If you are feeling down and feeling like your life's tough and feeling like you should be sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, read this book and it'll give you some perspective. I think perspective is really important. You know, go and speak to, you know,

your elders, your grandparents, and see what they, you know, see what they were doing at your age and see what was going on in the world at their age. I think if you have those conversations and read about some of our previous generations that have gone through some real hardships. It gives you that perspective to kind of motivate yourself and get going and not feel so sorry for yourself. So Man's Search for Meaning, this is somebody that literally had everything taken from them and came out the other side and talked about it. The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. I hope I'm probably butchering that name, but many of you know that book, great book. Beyond Religion by the Dalai Lama. This is just, again, one of those books you read and you get some perspective and you get that clear

mindset and you start to feel a little bit better. And for me, I'm not a religious person. I don't have anything against religion. I think you do you. But for me, I just never felt the calling. But the thing that's closest to religion for me is Stoicism. And any Stoicism from any of the big three Stoic authors is worth reading. Seneca is my favorite. A lot of people like Marcus Aurelius. I go to Seneca. And fiction, I think fiction books are important to read. And I don't have a list of a ton of different fiction books here, but I have some authors that I'll get to in a minute in the fiction category that I read to and refer to often. They could be quick airplane books, just something to kind of get your mind going and out of whatever negative headspace that you're in. Speaking of mindset, here's a couple mindset books that I

recommend. A lot of these, though, as you can tell, the books that I have been recommending help with mindset. And I also read, you know, when I need to get that kind of mindset perspective, I read a lot of biographies, which I have not carved a category out here for you because I feel like, again, that could be a whole nother podcast. And I think with biographies, that's also kind of personal, depending on the type of people, the type of eras, the type of information that you're interested in to recommend certain biographies. I know I recommended Arnold's, but there's, you know, if I got into biographies here, we could be here all night or I could be here all night, but I think biographies are good too. So for mindset books, there's a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And this is basically a history of

human evolution. Starting there, reading that, understanding where we come from, the struggles we've gone through as mankind, as human beings, as homo sapiens, reading that really gives you perspective on how far we've come. There's another book called Anti-Fragile by Nassim Taleb. as mankind, as human beings, as homo sapiens. Reading that really gives you perspective on how far we've come. There's another book called Anti-Fragile by Nassim Taleb. He's the author that wrote Black Swan, which is another great book. Mindset by Carol Dweck, also great.

And then also for getting things done, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Again, if I butchered any of these names, if any of these authors ever hear this, I'm sorry. I'm hoping the recommendation will suffice. And last but not least, so I mentioned earlier that some fiction authors that I read for entertainment and escape, these are just some authors that I love. I love pretty much all their books sometimes. Some of these authors, I read all their books. Some of them I'm just getting into, but I'll just go down the list. Connie Golden, he writes historical fictions. W.E.B. Griffin,

he writes military fictions. Wilbur Smith, he wrote books on Africa and Egypt. Harlan Coben, he writes mysteries. Robert Christ, mysteries. Cormac McCarthy, one of his famous books, one of my favorites, Blood Meridian. Larry McMurtry, he writes a lot of westerns, Lonesome Dove series being one of them. Jack Higgins jack Higgins Carl Hyson which is one of the funniest authors I've ever read in my life he also wrote the book for the movie striptease and a few others just kind of left field but in the books a

lot better Robert B Parker he wrote a lot of the Appaloosa series and my favorite which is he wrote the Asian saga books which is James Clavel he wrote books like Taipan, Shogun, Noble House. Those are beasts of books, but I recommend all of them. So those are the books that I recommend. And I also, I've done a couple posts on Lauren's blog. One of them,

if you're interested, is called Three Book Theory. And it's basically my theory on how I read sometimes three books at a time, obviously not all in the same sitting. But sometimes when you're reading dry books that are hard to get through, the information's still really great, but you can't sit through one setting. So a lot of times what I'll do is maybe I'm reading a biography and I'll read about 100 pages there.

Then I need a little break, go into a light fiction, get some entertainment there, and then maybe I'll go into a nonfiction one that's a little bit harder to digest. And I find that by doing this, at least for me, it gets creativity flowing and it helps me get through some of the books that are a little bit harder to get through. Not everyone's going to agree with this theory, but it works for me. And if you're looking for an in-depth post on this theory, if you go to the Skinny Confidential and look up three book theory, it's all there. I'll end it with a quote by Mark Twain. I'll end the

book section with a quote by Mark Twain. The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. So be sure to read. It's important. So as discussed earlier, I wanted to kind of get into some fitness slash diet stuff here. And again, I'm no expert in any way, but I do think it is worth mentioning and it is an interesting observation. I was thinking about this earlier and I want to frame this in the best way, but I have been, for a number of reasons, I think, and a lot of it's maybe genetics, maybe it's upbringing, but I have been within five pounds of the same weight that I was in freshman year of college, which was, you know, in 2005. I've been within five pounds of that weight for this, for the entire span of my life, right? Or

the entire span of the last 10 years since college or 11 years, whatever it's been. And so I think that that's no accident. It's not something that just happens because of good genetics. And I want to kind of maybe dissect some of the practices that have helped me get there. And I'll tell you what I think they are. So a friend of mine a while back told me, wait until you're 35. When you turn 35, you're going to be so out of shape. That's when he's saying, you know, he got a little, he got fat or he got out of shape or he gained a bunch of weight when he turned 35. And he always used to tell me, wait till you're 35. I'm not 35 yet. But I thought, I remember when he was telling me that, I thought to myself, like, fuck that. Like, why? Like, my examples, the people that I look to that

are older men that I consider to be in good shape is, you know, people like Henry Rollins, who's, you know, in his 50s, the old lead singer of Black Flag, still in great shape. Joe Rogan, again, another guy in his 50s, great shape. Lars Ulrich, I know a lot of you guys don't know who that is. The drummer from Metallica, great shape, still doing concerts and touring. Jocko Willink, who's in his late 40s, he's a marine seal and he's still in great shape. Mick Jagger, the guy's over 75, I think he's 75 years old, he's still in great shape. And those are the examples that I look to. And I think depending on who you look at in life as examples and where you think you're going is, you know, what can inspire you to get there. And for me, when I heard that, I thought to myself, like, okay, you can have that mindset where you say, okay, as I get older, I'm going to get worse. Or you can look at some examples of people like the people I just mentioned and say, wait a minute, if they can be in great shape and they can maintain a healthy weight and healthy diet, why can't I? And so that's kind of how I look at it to start with. The next part I look at is,

I think the reason I've maintained the same weight consistently is primarily probably because of diet. And we got into diet a little bit earlier. I've done a practice over the course of my life, and it really took me a while to figure out that I was actually doing this over the last three years, and Lauren used to beat me up for it, and many of you have heard that, called intermittent fasting. I kind of stumbled into this by accident, and I never set out to do this again, didn't really understand a lot of weight loss stuff when I was growing up, never was taught about it, but I don't really understand where this we need three meals, full meals a day comes from.

And I'm probably going to get beat up and there's probably a lot of nutritionists out there right now pulling their hair out. But this three meals a day thing, I've never really understood it. A lot of the times in the morning when I first wake up, I'm not hungry. I don't have an appetite. I have plenty of energy. I feel great. I can go work out.

And I just don't need that big breakfast. Sometimes it makes me feel lethargic. And also when I have those big three meals a day, I find myself wanting to take a nap in the middle of the day. And I just feel like your body needs time to process. So we talked to Jillian Michaels recently, and I think there's a difference between starving yourself and fasting. The word breakfast comes from break fast, right? I typically fast for about 14 to 15 hours. So maybe if I stop eating at eight o'clock at night the night before, I won't begin eating again till maybe 11 o'clock the next morning or maybe noon. And throughout this time, you know, if I am hungry and I do need something, maybe I'll have a little

snack. But most of the time, if I have my coffee or my Four Sigmatic products or my lemon water, if I've had that meal before in the night, I don't need some big breakfast. After that, I'll take the next eight hours in the day and I'll eat a really healthy lunch. When I say healthy, I don't mean necessarily it's the most healthy food, but I'll have a healthy portion and at dinner, have a big dinner. And I find that that gets me throughout the day. Also, whenever I go to restaurants, I know a lot of people, you know,

they grew up with parents that say, finish your plate, finish your dinner, which, you know, there's so much wasted food and I sympathize with that and you never want to be wasteful. But if I go somewhere and I'm eating and I'm full, then I stop eating. You know, I push the plate away. I push the plate away. I don't like to be a glutton. I don't like to shove food down my throat just to finish a plate. So I'm very careful with that kind of stuff.

Intermittent fasting, I find, gives me a ton of energy. I sleep really well. I have energy to go work out. I have my mind's in the right place. That being said, if there are those mornings where I wake up and I'm like, you know what? I'm feeling a little bit hungry this morning. It's eight o'clock. I typically don't eat at this time. I'll order breakfast or I'll go to breakfast. I never deprive myself, but I also don't force myself to eat just because people say that's when you're supposed to eat.

I really listen to my body and I think that's helped. The second part of that is since I was 12 years old, I've consistently done some type of workout, a minimum of three days a week. And that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to go to the gym every single day. That doesn't mean it has to be an hour workout, but it has to be something. If I'm traveling and I can't get to a gym, there's nothing stopping me from doing push-ups and sit-ups and burpees. Maybe I can move a chair together in the bedroom and do some dips. But I would say getting some type of workout three days a week consistently every single week is really important.

And not just important for your body, but for your mind. I look at it as you have this one body that you're going to have the rest of your life and why would you neglect it? And when you look at some of the most successful performers in the world, they really look at fitness as maintenance, right? Like some of them, some of us do it for the endorphin release. I never get those endorphin reliefs. I actually don't like working out. I look at it as maintenance. I look at it as something that I need to do to get my mind right, to get my business in order. If I have a family to take care of myself, I think it's selfish sometimes to not take care of myself.

You know, God forbid if something happens to me and I can't help the people that either I work with or my family or my wife. So, you know, I look at this body as like it's the vessel that's going to bring me through life and that motivates me to get going. And I don't care who you are or what stage of your life you're in, you can always find some type of physical

activity, you can always carve out time, you know, if you have time to surf the internet or surf the web or go party with friends or go have a drink, you can get some type of exercise in. And again, I may get beat up for this. And people might write in and say that this is, you know, maybe it's unkind to say or it's shaming people. But really, I'm hoping that the majority of you will look at it as, hey, you know what, he's right and I can take care of myself and there are things I can do. You know, go for a walk, go for a hike, do some push-ups, you know, go with your significant other on a bike ride, do something to get out of the house and get something going. And I really do, you know, attribute, you know, not being a glutton, eating when it's

appropriate to eat, controlling my portions, working out to the reason that I've stayed within the same, you know, weight range for the last, you know, 20 years of my life or so or 10 years of my life. It's because I really do look at it as maintenance and maintaining myself. And, you know, I take the time to really focus on taking care of myself. And I know as an entrepreneur that if I don't take care of myself and take care of my body and mind, that the rest of the stuff is going to fall apart. It's just a matter of time. So take care of yourself. Like I said in the beginning of this episode, this is stuff that's worked for me.

I'm not saying it's blanket policy that's going to work for everybody. It's just stuff that's worked for me throughout my life. Moving on from the health and fitness stuff, there are a couple apps that I forgot to mention earlier that are like iPhone apps and stuff that I'd be remiss to not mention. Postmates and Uber Eats, I look at these as time savers. I get really, really busy and I don't want to take the time all the time to run out to lunch or run out to dinner. And so I look at these, sometimes you pay the premium, but it also saves me the time of I'm not going to be ordering alcohol with this. So maybe that saves me a night of drinking or a day of drinking.

If I order from Postmates or Uber, I use these all the time to order salads or food when I'm working. I'm sure many of you are using them, but if you're not, check those out. The next ones that I would mention on here is an app called Way of Life. And I've mentioned this before on the show. Way of Life is a iPhone app, or it might be for Android as well, that tracks positive habits and bad habits. So you could say like a positive habit would be, you know, read for 30 minutes, positively work out for 30 minutes. A negative would be drink more than three glasses of wine a night. Like maybe that's too much. I don't know. I don't know what your intake is, but you can track positive and negative habits. And at the end of the week, you can go in and say, oh, how did that compare to the previous week? Am I trending up? Am I trending down? And it kind of holds you accountable.

You know, I've kind of gone in and out of this one, but I did it for about a year straight and it really helped me kind of get some positive habits in place. They say you need 66 days to break a bad habit and only 30 days to form a bad habit. So of course it takes double the amount of time to break a bad habit once it's formed. But this kind of helps you track to see if you're on point. I also can't live without the SiriusXM app. I have to listen to Howard Stern. I've been listening to him for, I don't know, 20 years now and having the app, I can tune in and out and see what's going on in his life. And also there's an app that I use all the time for white ambient noise called Relax Melodies.

When you have a wife as loud as mine, this is a game changer. I use it with those Bose headphones and some type of news app. I use the Wall Street Journal app. Sometimes a lot of the stuff in there is BS, but a lot of times you can read between the lines on those news apps and find out what's going on in the world, what the markets are doing, look for opportunities. I read the news not to get so into the politics, but to kind of figure out are there any new trending businesses? Are there any new trending ideas? What can I read between the lines here to see what's going on in the world and create an opportunity? Many of you guys have asked as well, and I know this, we're getting deep in this episode now. Many of you guys have asked about travel. Again,

this could be a whole nother podcast about travel, but right off the top of my head, some things that I recommend for travel. If can get this card the American Express Platinum card this is great you can use it to be part of their fine hotel program you can use points to book hotels and flights you get a little concierge service this is the business card that Lauren and I use also a personal card that I've used for a very long time is the British Airways chase visa card this is because we fly to Europe a lot and if you have this card, you can accumulate miles and maybe get a business class companion ticket so that when you go over

there, instead of having to pay those fares, you can use the points to book to London. And from London, you can get to anywhere in Europe pretty much. An app that we use when we're in New York and in London or any city really is called City M mapper I use this when you're walking on foot more than I use Google Maps I think it's more accurate it gives you the subway I'm if you're in New York it gives you the subway transit times it gives you the routes to take any idiot including myself can follow this map so again that one city mapper the infatuation app is great for dining and figuring out bars and restaurants. And if you want to, maybe you want to have a date night or you want to go meet friends or you want to have

a brunch, the Infatuation, I'm sure many of you are familiar with their blog and their apps. That's a great one. Duolingo is a language app, and I don't know if it's necessarily associated with travel, but whenever I'm going, you know, know somewhere as foreign country I use this app to kind of get the basics and kind of get the you know the basic words to understand you know how to order food or I'd ask for directions or most importantly how to ask for drinks and so Duolingo is great one and then Google Translate is great for reading menus and you can hold your phone over it and it'll actually turn the words from whatever language to English if you don't speak the language that you're reading. And my favorite thing for traveling, as many of you guys have seen in the past, is a good bag. This will be

a investment piece. It's a little bit pricey, but I think that everyone, if you're traveling seriously, should have a good bag. And that for me is the Tumi is an alpha garment bag. It's like a bag that can hold multiple either dresses or suits, because the reason I know about dresses is because Lawrence are putting them in there, blazers, jackets, whatever, and it folds up and hangs. And when you get to wherever you're going, you can literally just pull out the hangers that come with them and hang them in the hotel. Again, that's an investment piece. But Tumi comes with great warranties and we've had ours for about four years now. So I don't know the exact name of it, but I will have our team link it in the show notes, the Tumi Alpha Garment Bag. And also Wisps, never forget

Wisps, you want to have good breath, and a solid pen and paper have that as well and there's an article that i did on jet lag on the skinny confidential that goes in depth on how to beat jet lag so if you want to learn about jet lag and how to beat that or struggling with jet lag just go to the skinny confidential and type in jet lag and the article should come up as we near the end of this episode i want to mention quickly some supplements that I take. Again, not an expert in this field. Definitely have picked up a lot of this stuff either from Lauren or from experts that we've had on this show. But here are some of my go-to supplements and vitamins that I take if I happen to not forget, which I do a lot. But I take zinc because I hate getting sick. So I take zinc. I take omega-3s. We take Omax. We've talked about

that many times on the show. I have a lot of joint problems and joint pain, and this helps both with my cognitive reconnaissance. Is that how you say it? Cognitive abilities as well as my joint pain. So we take Omax. I take vitamin D3 because, as you know, Lauren and I aren't in the sun very often. And I take, before I go to sleep a lot of times, I take that stuff, the calm stuff, which I'm sure many of you have heard from Lauren. You can get it on Thrive, that calm powder. I take about a spoonful. But the kick is I also take it with some 5-HTP for serotonin. And I find when I do that, I feel a lot better in the morning when I wake up if I'm in a grumpy mood. So those are pretty much the supplements I take. Also sometimes some vitamin C. Lauren told

me to throw this section in here for fashion. I don't know how many of you are interested in this. This applies primarily to men over women. Maybe women, you can find some stuff to get your men or if there's any of the men listening out there, one of my five male listeners. These are some items that I think every man should have. And maybe I'm biased biased here but i think everyone should have one solid leather jacket need to have that i have a few i can't live i would i would live in a leather jacket if i could you need a closet full of white crisp dress shirts suit supply has some really affordable ones but i also wear the 15 h m white dress shirts you know you can wear those you know spill on them whatever and it's no big deal they're only 15 bucks get 10 of them for the

price of what a typical expensive dress shirt costs. Black jeans, I wear a lot of frame denim and black denim, white and black plain t-shirts. This is where I actually, it's funny, I spend more on my t-shirts than I do on my dress shirts. I wear James purse because you can wash them multiple times and they last a really long time. So I think those are about 60 bucks, but like I said, those last forever. So they're worth having. Every man needs a black, blue, and gray blazer for business. I try not to have to wear blazers too often because I try to keep it a little bit informal. But if I do, I'll wear those with either a white dress shirt or one of those James Purse t-shirts under it. One dark blue suit, some biker boots. I recommend a company called Broken Home.

We used to be partnered with that company. Great boots. And we helped them when they were first getting started, but check those guys out. And then some good sneakers. I like Converse, like plain white sneakers. I wear, a lot of the time I wear the St. Laurent SL1s. Those are all white. They're again, a little bit pricey, but if you take care of them, they can last a really long time. But if you're looking for something that's not as pricey, I've been wearing Converse since I was 10 years old,

and I still do, still swear by them. They're just as good as they were then, they are now. And can't forget the sunglasses I wear. Valley, Valley Sunglasses, Valley. Send me some more glasses, love those things, can't live without them, I have a really weird small shaped head, and these are the glasses that fit me for some reason, so pretty much the only ones that I wear. So this has been a pretty long podcast, it's actually gone a lot longer than I thought it would, and I hope you guys got some

value out of it, I hope some of these recommendations are interesting to you. If you like these type of podcasts, please let Lauren and I know. Maybe we can niche down into some more specific subjects. If you guys liked some of the book stuff or you wanted me to go more in depth in the book stuff or you wanted to go more in depth on some of the productivity tools or the workout stuff or the health stuff, be good to know. This was just more of a broad overview of some of the things that I use throughout my life and have interacted in my life to take me to where I am now. We will be doing, as you guys know, it's now that we have six episodes per month, a lot more solo stuff. Sometimes it'll be solo, just individuals, Lauren or me, or it'll be us two together, but we're starting to create more unique content like this. I'm getting ready to do a podcast all about creating a successful podcast. That's definitely

going to be a very niche topic that only speaks to the number of you that are thinking about getting into the podcast space. That will be an extremely in-depth how to, how to monetize, how to grow, how to build an audience, how to figure out which topics, how to structure a show, edit, distribute, all that stuff. So working on that still going to take me some time. And so stuff like that, anytime you guys are looking for kind of niche subjects or niche things that Lauren and I can get into, just, you know, we have that new podcast site. It's tscpodcast.com. Go there, go to the contact page and just submit ideas and we will do our best to accommodate you. As always, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening to my first solo episode.

Hopefully it brought some value and Lauren and I will be back this Thursday with another episode. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. This episode was brought to you by Four Sigmatic, one of our favorite companies. We interviewed Taro, the founder on the show, and had to bring the brand on board as a partner. Four Sigmatic specializes in superfoods, medicinal mushrooms, and adaptogenic herbs, and they make drinking mushrooms and superfoods delicious and easy to do with their mushroom coffees, mushroom superfood blends, and mushroom elixirs. If you're looking for a coffee alternative to switch up your caffeine intake, Four Sigmatic has the blends for you. They're all delicious. Just open a pack and add

to hot water. They don't taste like mushrooms. And like always, we have a special offer just for him and her listeners. Go to foursigmatic.com forward slash skinny and enter promo code skinny at checkout for 15% off your entire order. This episode was also brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 20,000 courses. We are currently using the platform to learn After Effects, Premiere, and Photoshop. This is a platform that creates

all of our Instagram stories, motion graphics, and graphics. This is a tool for brands and individuals to acquire new skills or take novice skills to an expert level. Think of it as the Netflix for learning skills. So join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners.

Get two months of Skillshare for just 99 cents. That's right, Skillshare is offering the Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just 99 cents. To sign up, go to skillshare.com slash skinny. Again, go to skillshare.com slash skinny to start your two months of learning now.

That's skillshare.com slash skinny.