The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Chase Your Life's Calling & Discover True Purpose Ft. Brent Underwood, Author - Ghost Town Living

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

#678: Today, we're sitting down with Brent Underwood, owner of Cerro Gordo, an abandoned boomtown silver mine established in 1865. He is also the creator of ""GhostTownLiving"" where he chronicles his adventures on YouTube. Brent currently lives on the mountain above Death Valley with no running water, seven cats, six goats, and at least one ghost. We have a discussion about what he's learned about reconstructing an abandoned mining town, what it's like living with no modern amenities, and sharing the entire process on his YouTube channel. He also discusses both his most dangerous and magical experiences throughout his journey. To connect with Brent Underwood click HERE To order Brent's New Book - Ghost Town Living click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click 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 The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Kerastase Visit Kerastase-USA.com and use code SKINNY15 to receive 15% off your purchase. Offer valid through 5/31/2024. This episode is brought to you by Caraway Ditch the chemicals with Caraway. Visit carawayhome.com/HIMANDHER to receive 10% off your next purchase. This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market Thrive Market is the go-to for all of your grocery and household essentials- and it's all conveniently delivered to your doorstep. Get 30% off your first order, plus a free $60 gift at thrivemarket.com/skinny or use code SKINNY at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny. This episode is brought to you by Sun Bum Visit sunbum.com and use code SKINNY15 at checkout for 15% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Nerdwallet NerdWallet lets you compare top travel credit cards side-by-side to maximize your spending, some even offering 10X points on your spending. Visit nerdwallet.com to learn more. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. 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.

Aha! So one night I was up there by myself. A bunch of four-wheelers came into town in the middle of the night. It's like 3 a.m. They came in and they pulled in front of our museum and they all shut off their headlights. I get heightened down like, what are they here for? And so I didn't really know what to do. I didn't want to like instigate some type of Wild West shootout.

So I decided I was going to turn on all the lights. So I turned on all the lights in my house. They kind of left and they went up the hill where, so I didn't really know where they were going. I was like, where could they possibly be going? And then I heard them talking, but I couldn't make out what they were saying, maybe a half mile away. And then five, they were back in town again, and they shut off the lights again in the same spot. And that was like a more difficult situation. I was like, do I do a warning shot? You know what I'm supposed to do here? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. Today,

we have a very unique guest. I would say one of the more unique guests we've ever had on the show. His name is Brent Underwood. Let me tell you why our friend Brent is so unique. How many of you have spent your entire life savings to go and buy an abandoned ghost town, an abandoned mining town in the middle of the desert in Death Valley or near Death Valley. Most of us haven't done that, but Brent has. He actually is the owner of Cerro Gordo, an abandoned boomtown silver mine established in 1865. He is also the creator of Ghost Town Living, where he chronicles his adventures on YouTube. I have found myself spending hours on his content. If you just search Brent Underwood or go on YouTube and see, you'll see why. He's living in an abandoned mining town.

He's rehabilitating this old town that has been basically dead to the world for 100 years or close to 100 years. And it's incredible. So in this episode, we talk about what he learned about himself moving into isolation, what skills he's learned to develop, how he's had to persevere. This is really a story about chasing and pursuing your dreams and going against the grain and doing something differently. So it's really about striking out on your own path, finding your life's purpose, your life's

mission, and doing things differently. Brent has definitely done that. So he's got a new book coming out that I think you guys should all check out and pre-order. It's called Ghost Town Living. And again, if you're just interested in a spectacular human story of perseverance and doing something differently against the grain your own way, this one's for you. Brent, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Brent Underwood, the only person I follow on TikTok, I think the only account I tune into, not that TikTok's not great. I just, I get sucked into your content. Doesn't even follow his wife. Wow. No. I appreciate it. I'm so glad you came here to do this. I think this is going to be

one of the more unique episodes that we've done. I'm really excited to be here. For sure. We got connected years ago through Robert Greene, who we love, and you have been up to some wild shit, my man. It's been a journey. I've been up to something. Yeah. So for the audience that doesn't have context, you have a new book right now called Ghost Town Living. Why don't you just give a brief overview as to what you've been doing and what you've been up to? Because again, I think it's unique. So I previously lived here in Austin, Texas. I was working with Ryan Holiday, who you guys know as well. And I was kind of doing a lot of book marketing. I had a side project of a bed and breakfast on the east

side at Cesar Chavez and Chicone, right there. I've always had this love of history and hospitality. The project over there was an old Victorian mansion. I was looking for the next project. A buddy of mine that lived in LA sent me this link that said, buy your own town for under a million dollars, which is just an amazing headline to begin with. He sent it to me in the middle of the night thinking it was a joke. He's like, oh, maybe this would be something you'd be interested in. I woke up, didn't see it as a joke, saw it as kind of the next opportunity, called the real estate broker. Long story short, ended up buying an abandoned mining town in 2018. And so just to set the context, it's about three and a half hours northeast of Los Angeles and about three hours west of Las Vegas.

And we're in the mountains. So people think ghost town. Sometimes they think like a flat desert town. But we're in like the high desert. So it's at 8,500 feet in elevation. So we're up in the mountains. It's about 400 acres in total. And underneath the town, there's 30 miles of mine shafts.

So there's just like a honeycomb of mines everywhere. But here's my question. What's the lead up to this? Like there must have, You said you wanted to switch it up, but there's got to be more than that. Were you just tired of being in gen pop? Did you have a breakup with someone? How did you really get to this decision or was it truly out of nowhere? It wasn't necessarily out of nowhere. I lived here in Austin. I had a comfortable life. I had a good apartment. I had nice friends. I have all that type of stuff. But I still had that feeling that maybe like

there was some untapped potential that I wasn't fulfilling, that maybe there was something else out there. I had that kind of call to adventure that I think strikes a lot of people at different times. I had just turned 30 also. And so I was like, you know, I felt like, I don't know what the clock was ticking in certain ways to do something. And I was like, was this going to be my thing forever? This kind of like, kind of comfortable life that I was living here. And so when I think back, growing up, my grandfather used to watch Gunsmoke over and over and over again, you know, the old Western show where like all those things would happen. So like there's always been this allure of the American West and like the romanticism of it. And then I

think I went to school for real estate and finance. So that's kind of my technical background, I guess. And so I've always loved buildings, architecture, and that type of stuff. And when I saw the listing, Robert Greene talks a lot about your life's task. Your main goal is to find your life's task, what you can combine your skills and interests in, in a way that nobody else in the world can. So I felt like this was an opportunity to combine real estate, storytelling. I'd been working with Ryan for 10 years then. So it's a way to combine the stories of the town and then also that history and hospitality love that I had. So I think that was kind of the, the reason I would give a lot of people. I think the real reason was just trying to find like, I don't know what I was made of, you know, like what could I do? What, what could I like stretch myself to see what would

happen? And I highly suggest for those listening, I hate for people to pause the show and stop listening, but to take a second, maybe even just check out your YouTube or your TikTok almost like a, I don't even know how to describe, but it's, it's very highly produced, but it's also just one person and there's voiceover work. It's like you put a lot of time in that. And I think for people like, what the hell is he talking about living in a mining town? You have to go look at your YouTube channel and your TikTok to get the full context. Cause you could just, I go on there sometimes and I'll be like, I've been on this thing

for an hour. Well, thank you. Yeah. I think that like, I think he's watching porn upstairs, beating his meat. And meanwhile, you're watching, you're watching a mining town. I'm watching Brent in the mine shafts. Yes. I mean, the videos to set the context more, the videos are documented of the last four years being up there and they're long. They're not the 10 minute YouTube videos that are usually like 45 minutes long. And I let shots kind of linger for probably too long that I should, but yeah, it's a great place to start.

But for those interested in YouTube in general, we were just talking right before the show started, you went to over a million subscribers in like a nine month period of time doing this type of content, which just goes to show like there is no special form. Like, you know, you said no shorts, it's just long videos you were filming with that were just interesting and unique. Yeah. I think that like, also I remember very early on in this, maybe when I put up three videos and there was this guy that came up

and they had like 15 million subscribers on YouTube. And I remember he sat on the couch with me. He's like, listen, I know that you don't watch a lot of YouTube. I was like, why do you say that? He's like, you don't shoot in the way that you should for YouTube. Meaning like you should tease what's going to come next.

You should do quicker shots. You shouldn't let a shot linger more than like three seconds. He was giving me all these things that like made him successful. But I was originally just making videos that I thought were cool. You know, I didn't watch a lot of YouTube,

but I like, I was like, this is the type of video that I would want to watch. And so I kind of started creating that. And I think sometimes listening to that guy, he almost led me down like a bad path for a while. I started trying to like make the content that he was describing me to make. But I think eventually I kind of pulled myself out of it

and started making what I make now. I think there's a big lesson there for content creators where I think there's a lot of people that listen to guys like that. Nothing wrong with that, that have kind of cracked the code, but it takes them out of what is unique to their style and their creation. And it kind of makes it, I guess, not unique in a way, but also not as compelling because maybe the person creating it is doing it then for the wrong reasons, like just to trigger an algorithm as opposed to creating what you find interesting. But I also think if you really are thoughtful

about the theme of what you're doing, it is slow and you do need to see the whole picture and you do need to pause and take a beat and go a little slower because it matches the vibe. Does that make sense? Oh, definitely. I think that originally too, also, your fans become your fans for a reason. I think that the fans that were watching it early on wanted that slower pace. And I think that it also developed a much deeper resonance. Because if you're sitting with somebody for 45 minutes and you're talking pretty slowly, it's like a lot of direct-to-camera shots where I'm staring right at the camera and talking. It just builds a much deeper connection, at least I found early on. And I don't know, it's been a lot of fun.

What did you tell your friends and family when you decided to take on this endeavor? One of the first people that I told was Ryan Holiday. He's always been a good, close friend. I remember sending him the link. He's like, I was like, hey man, I'm going to buy this. Do you want to throw in a little bit of cash? Because I didn't have the money to buy the whole place. And I remember he sent me that meme that was like, that'll be a no from me, dog, like Randy Jackson or whatever. That's all Ryan sent back. And I was like, oh, come on. Give me a little bit of a break here. So a lot of them were a little hesitant. But at the end of the day, I've been kind of taking a lot of risks since I graduated from

Columbia with a real estate degree. And so I should have gone into investment banking or something like that. And I quit that to do the backpacking thing. I eventually just worked freelance jobs to do anything but work in a traditional mode. So my parents, my close friends were used to me taking these types of risks. So they're generally supportive of it. How does one prepare to do this? What were all the things that you did in preparation? And also, did you prepare for a week or did you prepare for a year? Yeah, well, when I moved out there, this was in March of 2020. So this is when everybody's trying to figure out where we were going to be during the pandemic.

You know, everybody was socially distancing, saying, where are you going to go next? You were really social distance. Yeah, and this was the period of time when there was even like the rumors that they were going to shut down state borders. Remember that time when they were like, oh, we're going to shut down the borders? So I was on East 6th Street and I was right over there and I was like, I got to go, I got to go like now. And I thought maybe I'd be out there for a couple of weeks. Cause again, we didn't really know how long this thing was going to last. Wolfly unprepared to answer your question.

I got out there and like all bird slippers or whatever they were, you know, and like no winter clothes. The first night I got there, I was driving a two wheel drive truck and it didn't even make it all the way into town. So the final road to get into town is an eight mile dirt road where you go from 3000 feet in elevation up to 8,500 feet in elevation. So you're getting almost a mile. So imagine like a very steep, very like narrow dirt road that's like on cliffs. And so I was going up that road and at the bottom, I couldn't tell that there was a blizzard going on up at the top. And so when I got about a mile from town, the truck kind of started fish tailing, you know, like this. And so I was like, oh, my God.

And I think they're like… And you're all alone. All alone, just in my truck with all my stuff from Austin. You have service? I had cell service barely, no Wi-Fi. There's no running water up there. There is power. And so I think I went out there looking for an adventure.

And the adventure found me before I even made it all the way into town. And so I wasn't… I wouldn't describe it as prepared. It's been kind of like a learning process over the last four years of what you need to do to be prepared like that. Because I think that there's no handbook on bringing an abandoned mining town back to life. And so we're kind of treating that as we go. And I think that's kind of part of the appeal of it is that problem solving nature that you have to get into to figure it all out. Someone who's listening that doesn't understand this, when you say town, you mean the town that you're living in that's abandoned. There's not a town that has a

convenience. I'm thinking that there's like a 7-Eleven. The name of the town is Cerro Gordo. So back in the day, 1865, Cerro Gordo gets established as a mining town. So they originally found Galena there, which is a silver and lead ore. And so by, let's say, 1870, five years later, the town had about 4,000 residents. So it turned into these wild west boom towns where they're setting up restaurants, brothels, police stations, all these different things. Is there a brothel there now? There's an old brothel still standing. It's called Lola's Palace of Pleasure was its name. Perfect name. Keep going.

Owned by Lola Travis, a huge entrepreneur back in the day. Actually, she had multiple locations. And so there was all these 4,000 residents, hundreds of buildings. If you adjusted for inflation, they pulled about $500 million of the minerals out of the hill. So it was like a boom town. This place was, everybody was coming and going. By about 1880, everybody had packed it up and left.

The silver vein was mostly gone. Everybody left. And then a guy came in 1910 and he realized, well, everybody had packed it up and left. The silver vein was mostly gone. Everybody left. And then a guy came in 1910 and he realized while everybody was paying attention to the silver, nobody was paying attention to zinc. They started mining zinc again. And so they mined zinc till about 1940. And so for a mining town to have an active life from 1860 to 1940, like 80 years, it's crazy. Usually they thought these camps were going to last five to eight years at most. And so the town these days, when I say town, it's the former mining town of Cerro Gordo. There's no more mining going on up there. Mining hasn't happened since about 1940, so almost 80 years now. And these days there's about 20 buildings left. There's a hotel, a bunkhouse, an old movie theater.

We have the main mine building. There's about 400 acres of land and there's no running water. There is power bordering us. If you look to the east, you see all of Death Valley National Park. So the park's right there. And if you look to the west, you see the Sierra Nevada and Mount Whitney. And so it's kind of set in between. It's probably beautiful. Yes, it's set in between because Mount Whitney is the tallest peak in the lower 48 and Death

Valley is the lowest. So it's kind of this high-low contrast that I think describes the town really well. It's this place where so many people went out there seeking their riches. They were going to strike their claim and get rich and almost nobody did. It just has a history of grinding people to dust. I mean, there's a cemetery still in the town that has 400 people that were probably very excited, ambitious to go out there. And so these days, my hope, my goal of going out there is to try to, one, bring it back to life, give it an energy again, allow other people to go up there and both understand the history of the town, but draw the same type of inspiration that I can draw from there. And then two,

to allow basically people to stay overnight, basically a destination. So we're building a hotel right now. We're just about done with it. Hopefully this year it's done. So it's about seven bedrooms. There's a restaurant. There's actually a bar. We have a Brunswick bar from the 1870s, the actual bar itself that came out of Ryan's store in Bastrop. And so like he used to have a bar.

I don't know if you guys remember that on the record store side of the building. I don't remember. We were out there at night and I don't know like how much he's done since then, but it's been like a year or two since we've been out there, so he's probably... We gotta probably go out there. And he gave us this beautiful bar that he didn't realize until he gave it to me.

He's like, listen, if you fly to Austin and grab this bar, you can put it into the hotel. And then we looked it up afterwards and they're very rare. They're like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he's like, well, I don't want to be that generous with it all, but he got a good tax write-off or something. So, okay. So you're out there there what do the initial days look like you get there you're the only person in this old mining

town there's all these abandoned buildings there's a graveyard there's a deserted mine yeah again you go see your videos you actually physically go down into the mine which i think most people many people would find terrifying because you're not but what did the first few days look like and what are you actually doing? Because I think we talk all the time about kind of getting away, getting off the grid, getting outside yourself. Like this is like, you really did it. Yeah. The, the initial days was really exciting because I think the alternative was thinking I was going to be cooped up in an apartment in Austin. Again, this is during the pandemic. So everything was a little bit different. And suddenly I had 400 acres to just explore and look around.

So the days would usually be wake up, try to get warm. There's no central heat, so it's burning wood, chopping up the wood, putting it in the fireplace, trying to kind of get the evening cold out of there. And where did you sleep in the beginning? Did you sleep in one of the buildings? Yeah, so I sleep in what's called the Belshaw House. So the town was originally established in 1865 by a guy named Mortimer Belshaw. And so he was the main guy that brought the financing and made it. What a name. Yeah, it's a great name. And so I actually had these crazy mutton

chops too. He's an amazing photo. His photo, he has a portrait still in his house, which is awesome. And so I stay in his old house, which is right in the center of town. It's a two-bedroom house, no running water, all that type of stuff. And so usually I would get warm. I did have a little bit of cell service. So I would look to see if there's any emails that were urgent that I needed to handle. And otherwise, it would just be hiking around. I was hiking through three or four feet of snow at that point in time. So I'm hiking around, I'm looking at the buildings. I'm wondering why I had owned the price for two years then and nothing had been really happening. I tried to basically phone it in from Austin. And an abandoned mining town of 400 acres and

20 falling down buildings is not something that can be a back burner project. It's very much like a front burner project. And so then I started doing what I could. You know, the first thing I did was just starting repairing one of the porches. I thought, you know, listen, I've been waiting for all the circumstances to be perfect before making the right move. I was doing almost what I would call playing business. You know, I was setting up spreadsheets and I was putting together pitch decks and all these things that seem like they're good, but they're kind of just wasting time. And so then I started, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to start. And so I started building the deck and that led to like fixing one of the cabins, fixing another cabin. And so the days early on were split between fixing up the

cabins and then just hiking around. And then kind of the side part of that is I, Ryan says stolen. I say borrowed. I borrowed one of Ryan's cameras because I wanted to learn how to do astrophotography. You know, those long exposures. So I started filming some of the stuff, you know, just because I thought one, it was inherently interesting. And two, my family and friends were like, what's going on in the ghost town? And so I started making the videos probably my third month up there.

So you didn't go into it to know that you were going to create content and create this brand and book? Yeah, that was crazy. I didn't even start make the first video until two and a half years after owning it. And the only thing that drove me to do that was it was the pandemic. People started doing new hobbies. Some people started making the sourdough bread and all these different things. I was like, oh, I'll make some videos. And the first video I remember, it was like, I spent my life savings on an abandoned mining town, which is a good title for a video. Yeah. And so the first video did really well. And I remember early on, I still don't understand the

power that maybe a popular YouTube channel could have. And so the guy that came up, that gave me the advice, he's actually the one who's like, listen, you should take this a little more seriously. Like this could really help your town. It could help it, you know, bring it back to life like you want to do. And so then I started kind of doubling down on the content, making a lot of videos, meeting people and enjoying that creative outlet because my day job is helping other authors. That's how we met through Robert. And so I'd always been in proximity to other creative people, but never had like that creative outlet of my own. And so I think with the videos, I found my own creative outlet and I really enjoyed it. That's probably so liberating for you that you have helped behind the scenes so much.

And now you're able to put your energy towards something that's creating something for yourself. It's very cool full circle because the people that are on the book and blurbs are some of my favorite authors in the world. And so to work that closely with them now is just, it's very satisfying. Yeah. I have like work that closely with them now is just, it's very satisfying. I have a question. I need some like little details here. As many as you like. Okay.

What are you eating? I need like you to tell me that you're eating like, are you eating Cheez-Its or are you like hunting a chicken? Early on, I got stuck up there where the road, the eight mile dirt road, doesn't get plowed. You know, nobody's plowing this road.

And so when the blizzard hit, when I first arrived, it was a function of, I need to eat anything. So there's canned goods. A lot of these canned goods were like expired canned goods that were just up there. You brought them up there or they were just there? They were just there. They did the different cabin. So I was kind of going cabin to cabin to cabin eating the canned goods. And I would love to say that four years on, it's like a much different situation, but it's still a lot of canned goods and not good stuff because the closest market of any sort is about an hour away.

Then how are you going to have a restaurant up there? The hotel that we're building, it's from scratch. It has deep commercial freezers and walk-in fridges and all that. So we'll have to have deliveries quite often to handle that part of it. There's electricity up there, right? We have electricity, yeah. I think I should open a brothel called Lauren's Treasure Ple it. There's electricity up there, right? We have electricity, yeah. I think I should open a brothel called Lauren's Treasure

Pleasure. Lauren's Palace of Pleasure. Lauren's Palace of Pleasure. I kind of like it. It has a ring to it. It's good. To be honest, hearing you talk and watching your videos, I might just shut down this whole operation and move out to that ghost town. We have plenty of room. My husband loves Solitude. He would love it. I love it. Do you

get to read a lot? I get to read a lot. I get to just stare at a wall a lot. Sometimes I just need the recharge of staring at a wall. I just love doing that. It is. There is a very romantic appeal to it most of the days. There's two sides to Michael Bostic. There's one side that wants to be on the show and wants to listen.

Then the other side that wants to just leave and never come back. Honestly, I could use a break. Do you want a friend out there? Come on out. I have some more little micro questions. Yes. Are you drinking alcohol, smoking weed, or doing drugs? No, none of the above. So you're dead sober. Yeah. So like early on, people, when you live in a mine town, they think that you're drinking a lot of whiskey. So I'd get gifted just many bottles of whiskey. That's what I would gift you, I think. Yeah. So like in one of the earlier videos, it's like, oh, and if you want to do something for the town,

you know, leave a six pack of beer or a bottle of whiskey at the bottom of the road. Thinking it was a joke. I was like joking around. But now like probably a couple dozen times, there's bottles of whiskey

just waiting for me at the bottom of the road from like fans that come by and just leave them down there. And I don't drink them. There's a shelf. Nobody ever comes up? They do when the weather's good,

you know, when the wintertime, not so much. So you're not drinking whiskey up there? Not drinking whiskey. I'd love to eventually start a whiskey thing. I think that'd be cool, like an old mining town whiskey. I'm not saying that I don't drink at all, but I've never one of those ones that it's like a social drinking. I'm not going to sit there by myself and stare out the window. Probably a good thing. It seems very romantic, but I do think that it could turn from very romantic to very depressing in a way, if that was kind

of the route I was taking. Are you dating anyone when this is happening? Not at the beginning, no. These days, I am, no. So how are you maintaining a dating relationship with this? My girlfriend has a profession where she can be very flexible where she is. So she's a musician. Does she come with you? She's been up at the town for many months before, yeah. Wow. Are you guys sleeping in a sleeping bag or is it a bed? No, there's beds up in town these days. There's beds. Yeah.

Okay. So like the houses, they're old, but inside we have like Casper mattresses now, you know, Ghost Town, Casper makes sense. Good call for Casper. You're like code Ghost Town. Yeah. Ghosttown.com slash. But no, the insides are pretty comfortable.

There's no central heat, but the bedding and stuff is pretty good. So early days, it sounds like now you've got a little bit of infrastructure and you've kind of figured it out. But early days, I think this also takes a lot of courage, right? You're up there. You're alone. You're in a mining town. I don't know if you believe in ghosts, but there's a lot of creepy stuff that's happening

up there. There's people that have died in this mine. Yes, right? And they're up there. There's people that have died in this mine. Yes. Right. And there's a lot of them there. There's a graveyard. You're by yourself living in some old guy's house that's been gone for a long time. Are you scared or nervous in the beginning and how are you going through those emotions? Yeah. Originally there was, I think the excitement overrode any type of nervousness or anything like that. But there were sounds that when you're not used to them, I was like,

what is going on? Especially when you don't expect to hear any sounds and you hear sounds, that's when it's the freakiest because you're like, oh, you can't blame it on anybody else. What kind of sounds? A door closing that you're not around, things like that. And then that's when you really start to question.

And I get the question about Ghost Lot because the town was really dangerous back in the day. The newspapers would show a murder a week and there was a mining collapse in 1871 that collapsed 30 miners down to the 200-foot level of the mine. There's a wall. And they're still there. There was so much rock that fell on top of them, they couldn't get them out. So to think that there's still entombed miners 200 feet below where I'm sleeping is an uncomfortable thought to go through.

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We'll put sprinkles on them, chocolate chip muffins. We bake banana bread. We get really creative in the kitchen. So you can imagine I take my bakeware very seriously, and it should not surprise you that I use Caraway. The reason that I use Caraway for all my kitchen supplies is because it's non-toxic. Like I told you, I, when I moved to Austin, just ditched the chemicals and really tried to be purposeful with each thing in my home. And Caraway is the absolute best. All of their kitchenware is non-toxic. It's chemical-free ceramic coating. And also, what I like is it has a super sleek, like a naturally sleek surface. So you know when you go there and you grab all your kitchenware,

everything is non-toxic. 65,000 people have rated five stars with their Caraway kitchen. I love, by the way, the cream set for everything. That's the one we got. They have all different colors. They have like a navy, which is really chic. They even have a sage and a marigold. They have white with gold accents. They really make it fun. Visit CarawayHome.com slash him and her to take advantage of this limited time offer for 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners. So visit carawayhome.com slash him and her, or use code him and her at checkout. Caraway, non-toxic cookware made modern.

One thing I take very, very seriously is my time. And I can say since moving to Austin, I have not gone to the grocery store. I have gone to the farmer's market, but not the grocery store, and that is because I have Thrive Market. Thrive Market is my personal mommy-wife go-to for all my grocery and household essentials. It is so convenient because not only do they deliver everything to my door, they do the work for me. So they only carry brands with the highest quality ingredients and sourcing methods. They also restrict a ton of ingredients so you don't have to worry about buying something that isn't the best of the best. They're always looking for like

organic kids snacks, low sugar alternatives, gluten-free pantry essentials. They just really help you curate your own shopping experience so you know that you're getting the best. And again, I feel like this saves time to have someone who's in there checking all the ingredients and foods is so nice for someone who's really busy. When you join Thrive Market, you are also helping a family in need. They have this one-for-one membership matching program. You join and they give. You should also know they have cleaning categories. So if you're looking for some non-toxic cleaning supplies, they have that as well. It's really everything in one place. Save time and money and shop Thrive

Market today. Go to thrivemarket.com slash skinny. You get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. That's thrivemarket.com. Speaking of mining, you're going down 900 feet and hanging out there. Does that not give you the most claustrophobic anxiety? You have to explain, first of all, how you know how to do that and what that's actually like. Yeah, it's one of those learning on the job situations. Again, I grew up in Florida. It was very flat. There's no mines, things like that.

And originally the idea of mines, I knew that it was like a mining town, but the idea that the mines are the reason that the buildings exist didn't strike me. Meaning, if it wasn't for what was happening underground, nothing above ground would exist. And so for me to understand the history, I felt like I almost had to go into the mines in a certain way. And so originally it was one of those ones

where you'd walk 20 feet in the mine, get scared and run out. Walk 30 feet in the mine, run in, walk out. But eventually I started learning how to use ropes, how to do different things, talking to people that were on search and rescue in the area, things like that. And these days, I'll rappel down the 900 feet, which is fun. It's fun going down the rope 900 feet. It's less fun going back up the 900 feet

rope. It's really taxing. Imagine pulling yourself up a rope for 900 feet. Wait, how long does 900 feet take to pull up? Is it like five minutes? No. So I was going as fast as I possibly could last time I did it. And it was two hours and 45 minutes. Like as fast as you possibly could. Wait, can you take a break? You can take a break. You can hang out on the rope. It has like, it won't let you go back down. But imagine 900 feet is like a 90 story building with 10 foot ceilings, you know? So imagine- That's what I'm saying. You have to kind of like go look at his stuff in parallel with listening to this to understand how wild this is one of the questions i had in relation not only to the to the town but actually going down on the mines i was watching one of your videos you're like you know if something

happens to you down there and you're alone yeah nobody knows nobody knows you're in an old mine yeah you're all alone there's no service you're in the middle of the dark in many cases. This is kind of like, I guess, a spiritual thing, but what happens to your mindset when you have that kind of isolation? I think many of us fantasize about kind of like getting away and unplugging. This is really away and unplugged and the world doesn't know anything about where you are. What is that like? Yeah. I mean, I love going into the minds because, you know, athletes describe the flow state a lot. They're like, I can get into flow state. And I think one of the mines, everything else almost dissolves away.

I'm not worried about the anxieties I'm worried about above ground because I have to focus on not dying, to be honest with you. I'm only focused like literally on tunnel visions because I just see a tunnel in front of me. And so I enjoy the experiences because I'm not worried about, you know, an email I didn't answer or an angry phone call at somebody. I'm just worried about what's in front of me, getting through the mind, discovering whatever I'm going to discover. And to describe what it's down there is like, and I don't think this comes out in videos either. It's darker than you can possibly imagine it being dark because already you're 900 feet underground. Then you go over to a side shaft. So there's no idea that even a glimpse of light could get in there anymore. And it's quieter than any other place in the world because there's

no dripping water. There's no animals down that deep. So it's just as quiet and as dark as it possibly could be. And so sometimes just like for fun, I'll turn off all my lights and just stand there. And that's a very like dissociating feeling. I don't know. I really love it. Do you have extra flashlights in case one goes out? Are you using your phone? What if your phone goes out? Like what are your... It's just the iPhone. I went through that thought process. The answer is glow sticks

because glow sticks can't run out of batteries. And so I'll have my headlamp and everything, but I usually have a glow stick in my pocket. So if worst case, I could break that and that'll like, you know, at least illuminate enough to get back to wherever I need to go. That is smart.

A glow stick. How do you keep track and map out where you are down there? I bet that's a scary part of it because how do you even know where these paths go? Yeah, you're kind of trying to remember where you go. These days, there's a 3D mapping tool where you basically can just hold your phone because phones these days have LiDAR on them, which is capturing dimensions and basically video at the same time. And so I can these days walk through a mine like this using Polycam is the name of the app, and it'll capture the dimensions. And I can go back above ground,

and I can basically 3D map the mine from above ground, which is really cool. Because then I'd be like, oh, how far was that? And then it's capturing dimensions. So I can be like, oh, it's exactly 174 feet back in the mine is when this happens. And so I think it's cool for that reason. But it's also cool because these mines are actively collapsing you know back in the day there might have been 30 miles now there's maybe 20 miles and so this is like a digital archive of the mine that it's going to exist forever how deep have you gone 900 feet is the bottom of the shaft but then off of that there's probably miles in some of the mine shafts we're just wandering and meandering back there and it's wild because it's like i think of it as a city underneath the town because down in the

mines, there were changing rooms where they're changing in different clothes. There was dynamite vaults where they kept all the dynamite. There was areas where some of the mules that would be down in the mines would stay. There was restrooms down there, break rooms. There's all of these things existing 900 feet underground that are just very fascinating to walk into. When you go down there, is the reason that you're going down there to look for minerals or is it to look at what's the reasoning? What's your why? The why is, one is understand the history of the town. Again, I think that the context, anytime you can understand more context of your surroundings, it means more to you. Meaning like, so let's say that you live by a park, right? And you walk by that park every day for five years,

but one day you stopped and you decided, I'm going to look up the history of that park. The next time you walk by that park, it's going to mean more to you than it did the day before. And so for me, I read about the 900 level of the mind necessarily in a book over and over. But then when I go down there, I see it with my own eyes. It just comes alive when I think about it. And so part of it's understanding that history, which allows me to feel more connected to the mind and feel more connected to my work, which I think is important. But the other reason is, it's interesting, you know, there's old school stuff down there. You know, the thing that mine explorers are always looking for is Levi jeans, which is really interesting because Levi jeans, jeans as we know them were invented by Levi Strauss in the

1870s. You know, denim existed before that, but Levi Strauss invented blue jeans as we know them in 1870 for California silver miners. They were supposed to be work pants at first. And so if you can find an original pair of Levi jeans from 1870, it's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's interesting not to me necessarily because of the price tag, but because of the rarity that's attached to them. And I love history. So the idea that this everyday item that most of us wear most of the days is, I don't know,

originated from something that might be in the mind is cool. I'm going to put it out there in the ether that you're going to find Levi jeans. I love that. I need that. I need that type of weather. Hopefully it's my size. What's the most unique thing you've found down there? My favorite thing, I have found a pair of Levi's.

They were shredded. They were very damp. That was one of the damp levels of the mind. But Levi's put the rivets on the jeans for the first time. So they had the rivets that said Levi's Strauss & Co on them. And these days, not to go on too long of Levi's tangent, but Levi's has a company historian who I've gotten to know. And so I could text her a photo of the button and she could be like, oh, 1910. She knows exactly when the jeans are from. But my favorite find down there, I was by a ladder that was connecting an upper

level of the mind and lower level of the mind and there's an old tobacco tin and in the tobacco tin there's a note that these miners were passing back and forth and all they were doing was trying to figure out when they were going to go to lunch but to me it just like humanized them in a way where you think all these black and white photos of miners working down the mind but they were just guys that were trying to figure out when to go lunch. And that just, I don't know, it struck me in a way being down there in a way that none of it, I found clothing items. I found a bunch of old dynamite. I found silver ore. I have found some silver ore. I pulled it out and refined it and made some jewelry out of it. But humanization of it was really good. When you do this, there's, it's so relaxing. I don't know if relaxing is the

right word. It's so maybe calm and it's so zen and it's so not taxing on your nervous system besides the minds. But it seems like it's like you're with the earth. And then you come back here and you've got Ryan Holiday's podcast and a meet and greet and you're in this room right now with these lights that are so bright. Do you feel a lot like it's too much and you need to take a beat? Yeah, I think the first day back, I'm almost craving it because it's been so long. I want human interaction. But I think that my bandwidth for human interaction, to describe it that way, is shortened so much after being up there.

Before, maybe I would love to be in a crowded space for a couple hours. Now it's 30 minutes and I'm good. And I remember my first time back, the first year that I lived at Cerro Gordo, I almost never left. I just loved it and I wouldn't go anywhere else during the pandemic. So probably for the first, let's call it 18 months, I never left the hill. Then I go to the town to get some groceries maybe once in a while. And the first time back was to Austin and I went to ACL and like Austin City Limits. And it was just a nightmare to be honest with you. Cause like two reasons, like one, there's so many people, but then also I never really met people that were watching the channel up until that point because it was all just

like numbers on the screen. But walking into ACL, people were coming up to me and it's like, Oh, I love you. And like, it was very, well, like not only are them around people that are like coming in close to me, you know, is a very interesting experience. I'm sure. It's like no exposure to all of a sudden millions of people know who you are. Yeah. What are little things that you, that, or we take for granted that when you come back, you just want? Fresh fruit. Number one for me, vegetables in any sense. Sushi is a nice one. Running water. When you go. Talk about that for a minute.

What is it like not having running water? Yeah, I think you can kind of conceptually think, oh, like running water, that would be difficult. But then you start thinking, washing dishes is hard, you know? Washing your hands, washing everything. And it's just, it almost can consume your whole day.

I think there's this quote that Mark Twain said back in the day. He said, whiskeys for drinking and waters for fighting over. And I think that like, I understand that now because it's just like, it consumes my whole day sometimes trying to figure out exactly how to get water into the town. These days, we truck it up in an old military truck. I saw you.

Is that the one with like the giant container, like the huge? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that thing's massive. And where does that, once you get it up there, where do you put it? It feeds to the houses. So to the houses these days have kind of a working restroom with a shower. So I've made a lot of progress since that first period of time being up there. You know, originally it was kind of like camping indoors is how I would describe it. These days there's a restroom, there's a shower, there's all these fine things,

but I'm still blown away. I mean, I think again, that first trip back to Austin, the thing that really blew my mind is I had been living for 18 months without reliable running water and i was on the plane back i went to the bathroom of the plane i was like oh like i'm in the air and they can like have a sink in this air and i can't you know i can't have a sink in the town it was but you can i guess now like what that concept so you can essentially bring this supply of water up yeah consistently and then supply all these houses with because they're never gonna would they ever get to the point where they pipe it up there? They'll never pipe it up the mountain, but half of my day is thinking about other alternative water sources. So a big one that I've been experimenting with this winter is gutters.

We do get a lot of snow. So when it melts, it has to go somewhere. I'd love to capture some of that. I've explored the idea of drilling a well, which we're at the top of a mountain. And so the estimates that I've gotten, we'd have to drill at least like a thousand feet down, which is a very expensive proposition. And with wells, it's crazy. Wells, there's no guarantee. They said you can drill and it'll be dry. How much is it? About $250,000 to drill the well. So are you taking investors for the hotels or what's the plan with that?

Yeah. So I've been self... Originally, some friends chipped in money to buy it because it was $1.4 million to buy it originally. I had the property in Austin that I can kind of get a loan against, so that helped a lot. I mean, Austin real estate was a good thing to get into a while back when I got into it. Had some friends chipping in some money, but these days, a lot of it's self-funded. I still work the day job with Ryan. We still have our company there. And then the social media, the ad integrations on YouTube, stuff like that pays for a lot of it as well. That's rad. Do you love what you're doing right now? Wouldn't change it for the world?

Yeah, absolutely. I love it in a way that I never thought I could enjoy my work when I was living here. I think that's what keeps me there. It's very difficult to live there. I want sugar coat. It's really hard day to day. I'm not a guy that could lose a lot of weight. I want like sugar coat. It's really hard day to day. Like I'm not a guy that could like lose a lot of weight. And I lost like 40 pounds since living up there just because there's not a lot of food, you know, health and nutrition used to be a big part of my life and kind of got thrown out the window when I moved up there because I'm just like focused on rebuilding. But like the trade-off is worth it to where I'm, I'm stoked about what I get to do every single day. And I think that that's something I was always love to do. I don't think that I'll be up there full time. I do think that's unsustainable long, long term. I think I would love to split my time almost.

Spend six months, the best, like the summer months up there. Enjoy that time. Winters can get pretty cold and snowy. And being from Florida, I'm not about that life necessarily all the time. Yeah, not. Yeah. So I think long term, if I'm thinking five, 10 years down the road, splitting my time might be the way to do it.

What's the craziest story that's happened to you out there? Oh, man. There's different genres of stories. There's like natural disasters. There's social media stuff. There's stalker type situations. Tell us all three. What's the scariest you've ever been up there or the most scared?

The most scared? Stalker? There's two moments that came up. How is someone stalking up there? Jeez, that's a committed stalker. I'm going to tell you what Brent, if someone was stalking me in the ghost town, I would be like, God, this person really wants to be with me. Maybe I should give him a chance. It's tough because the big premise of the videos is where I live. That means that everybody knows where I live, even down to the house. Like we've already, I live in the

Bellshall house. That's like a well-known thing. And so I think Tim Ferriss talked about it once where he said basically the law of big numbers. If you have a big following, I think he said, he's like, listen, in high school, in your graduating class, were there a couple of people that are a little bit difficult to deal with? Yeah, there's like two or three. It's like, okay, how many are in your high school class? 500. Okay, multiply that by a million. You're going to have tens of thousands of people that are difficult to deal with in different ways. And so one night I was up there by myself. This is early on in the experience. A bunch of four-wheelers came into town in the middle of the night. It's like 3 a.m. And they came in and they pulled in front of our museum and they all shut off their headlights,

which I was like, oh, what? You don't happen upon the town. If you're going up to the town, you're going up there for a reason. I get heightened down. I'm like, what are they here for? And so I didn't really know what to do. so i was thinking what's the game plan now i didn't want to like instigate some type of wild west shootout by like you you can have a firearm there i have a firearm yeah i have a couple just to like protection more than anything else so i was like do i want to go that route and potentially start so i decided i was going to turn on all the lights so i turned on all the lights in my house they kind of left and they went up the hill where there isn't anything about beyond town so i didn't really know where they were going. I was like, where could they

possibly be going? And then I heard them talking, but I couldn't make out what they were saying, maybe a half mile away. Eventually I went to sleep maybe around 4am and then five, they were back in town again for a second time. And they shut off the lights again in the same spot. And so I'm just thinking at this point, they're aware that I'm here. So at first I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Hey, they didn't know anybody was in town. Maybe they just wanted to find an abandoned ghost town. But now they knew that I was there and they're stopping it again.

And that was like a more difficult situation. I was like, do I do a warning shot? You know what I'm supposed to do here? Luckily, I just turned on lights and left again for the second time. But it's still the understanding that people can be in the town when I'm not aware of them at night when I'm sleeping

is not a comfortable feeling. And so I think that's probably the most uncomfortable I had been. It was super under, it reminds me when you were talking about Danny DeVito meme where he's like, and then I started blasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'd be me. I'd be like, I don't have time to figure this out. Just these days we do have sense. I do know when people are in town, just, you know. Is that the stalker? I didn't figure out who they were. Another time somebody robbed us up there or robbed me up there. That was not like face-to-face. They stole something out of one of the buildings when I didn't figure out they were another time. Somebody robbed us up there or robbed me up there.

That was not, not like face to face. They stole something out of one of the buildings when I was sleeping. And so that was difficult. I feel like that's just someone who wants to just

take like a souvenir. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. They, well, they took a, like a giant jug full of money.

So it's less of a soda because I had like, you know, those five gallon glass jugs that like for water. Yeah. I had one of those where people could put donations because we don't charge people to look around the town.

It's like donation based. So people will throw five, 10 bucks in there or whatever. And I didn't realize how to like get the money out of the jar. It's like a more difficult process. So I just left it in the, I was like, whatever. And there's somebody who stole that in the middle of the night one night. What about the stalker? I want to hear about the stalker.

Yeah. There's a woman named Karen. We'll use the name Karen. And Karen was going to help us with some supplies. You know, she wanted to help out the town however she could. She was coming from Utah. I was like, oh, we're building houses. She's like, oh, I can't build any houses, but I can help bring you some supplies. I was like, fantastic. I'll always need vegetables. And how do you know this? Is this via DM or is this email? Email. So we're emailing back and forth. She's like, how can I help the town? I was like, okay,

we love fresh fruits and vegetables. I say the same thing to everybody. Fresh fruits, vegetables, water, bring up whatever you'd like. She's like, okay, we love fresh fruits and vegetables. I say the same thing to everybody. Fresh fruits, vegetables, water. Bring up whatever you'd like. She's like, okay, I'll bring some up. So she was supposed to arrive around 10 a.m. And I'm like, all right. So I'm expecting around 10. Not there, not there, not there. Sunsetting at, let's say, 7.

So 6.30, a car rolls into town. It's Karen. I look out and she's just like chain smoking in this Dodge Charger, which shouldn't be able to make it all the way to town on the dirt road. So already that's very strange. I was like, what is going on? And at the time we had like somebody helping me up there. And so he was there and she was having a difficult time parking the car. I went down to

meet her. I was like, Oh, Hey, how's it going? She's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I came so late. You know, I know that's a lot later than you anticipated. She seemed very flustered. If you're like very flustered with the whole situation, it's don't worry about it. Don't worry about driving back down the hill at night. It's really scary. I was like, we have plenty of beds up here. You know, we have plenty of beds up here. You know, we have the bunkhouse over here. We have this room, this building that has six rooms in it. And she got very uncomfortable with that prospect.

She said, no, no, no. And like, I thought, okay, she doesn't want to like sleep in a building with other people. I understand that. You know, I could understand that. I was like, we have a trailer over here. It's a private like Airstream trailer. And I was like, you can stay in the trailer. And she goes, she kind of begrudging. She's like, oh, okay, okay.

We'll go to the trailer. And so my buddy's parking the car for her because she couldn't park the car um and i'm walking up and she starts quoting um the movie misery have you seen that movie with kathy bates so basically this movie is about jesus christ yeah this movie's about an author that has an accident and she this woman's a nurse in the movie and takes her into takes him into her care and keeps breaking his legs to keep her in in her control so and keeps breaking his legs to keep her in her control so she keeps breaking his legs so she can pin that to my pin board if Michael

fucks up yeah when you just keep breaking the leg yeah so like she's an associate this woman this woman starts quoting misery to me and I was like whoa I kind of know what it was and then my buddy came up he's like dude you have to get out of here like right now and because the vibe is off so we get her we go into the trail I'm like like, okay, very nice to meet you.

I'm going to go back to my house. And at the time, I was not staying in the Belshaw's house. I was staying in the Gordon house. And I was like, I'm staying in the Gordon, but nice to meet you. I'll see you later. And so I go into the other house, though, just knowing something was up. My buddy was talking to her. And she got really flustered.

She's like, this wasn't the plan. And he's like, well, what was the plan? And she's like, oh, I'm very embarrassed. And he's like, what's the plan. And he's like, well, what was the plan? You know? And she was like, oh, I'm very embarrassed. And he's like, what's the plan?

She's like, oh, like I wanted to spend the night with Brent tonight. And my buddy, you know, took it in stride. He's like, oh,

like he doesn't even let me do that. You know, trying to make a joke out of it. And I guess she was like, well, can I go down and get one of the cats? I have some cats out of the Gordon house. He's like,

absolutely not. The Gordon house is his house. Nobody's allowed in there at night. Like do not go in there. And then he comes over to the other house and we watch out the window and like less than an hour later, she's like creeping into the house that she thinks that I'm in. And at which point we were concerned. So we go down to this other building. We changed locations a second time and we decide I had her email address. We looked her up on Facebook and her last two posts on Facebook before she came up here were, um, you bring out the inner serial

killer in me was her post. And then the one after that was like, I may be smiling but in my head I've killed you a hundred times. Was her two posts before she came to Cerro Gordo. And so originally we were like, well, this is like a problem. And so my buddy snuck back and took a photo of her license plate just so

that way we had it on file. She eventually leaves like two hours later in the middle of the night, you know, midnight. She just takes off, goes back to utah and we thought that was the end of it we're like oh that was weird you know it's like oh the crazy karen story you know we had this story in town oh i forgot to tell you when she arrived she handed me five hand painted paintings of me but like me jacked like me with like way more muscle like sitting on a thing yeah no we did they're in the house now yeah i'm up um and so i saw the paintings and that was that was her image of you just like yeah and then and then jacked minor i forgot about and then i moved houses after that i was like i'm moving houses so i moved to this other cabin and a couple weeks later i'm just like on a phone call

and the charger pulls up in front of the house again i see her chain smoking and i was like no so i run to a different building and somebody else is there i was like hey go tell that person they should leave or whatever i guess she said hey i'm here to pick up brent i'm here to take him to lone pine for a couple days which is the closest town and the person's like you're not here to like take him to lone pine and she basically wouldn't leave for a while after that but that was the that was the stalker story where is she now have you looked her up on i don't know recently to see i haven't oh i haven't this is the two years he's buried her up on Facebook recently to see her? Oh, I haven't. This has been two years.

She's buried her in the mine. Yeah, there's a lot of mine shafts. I have questions after this story. It sounds like there's a couple people that are up there though with you now. These days, yeah. Well, that's probably like... That's good. Yeah.

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room upgrades, cash back on spending, rewards for spending, more points for spending. Don't wait to make smart financial decisions. Compare and find smarter credit cards, savings accounts, and more today at nerdwallet.com. NerdWallet, finance smarter. Reminder, credit is subject to lender approval and terms apply. When you were first starting out though, and you were by yourself, what was your idea if something went wrong? You must have had some kind of protocol in your head. Yes. I had my cell phone, which always is good to call, but I also have what's called a Garmin inReach. And so like inReach is our satellite phones, essentially. So you can, if you lose service, no matter what,

and there's an SOS button on it. So if you press that, a helicopter's coming to you. Okay. And so like, no matter what happens, if you press that button, the helicopter's finding you. So that was kind of the- Is that a subscription, like a service you have to pay for? Yeah, it's like $9 a month.

But for me, I mean, that's worth it by so much. But that's interesting. I didn't know they had that. So for anyone that's like sitting up, thinking about hiking or going out anywhere, that's like-9 a month. But for me, I mean, that's worth it by so much. But that's interesting. I didn't know they had that. So for anyone that's like sitting up thinking about hiking or going out anywhere, that's like potentially. Yeah, it's complex to save my life many times. It's $9 a month. It's like $150 little device that clips right here.

And it'll actually like, it'll use Bluetooth to your phone. So you can use your phone as normal, but it's communicating through satellite. I have a random tangent question. Yeah. What are things people should consider when it comes to survival and taking care of themselves? I mean, most people are safe

in a metropolitan environment around a bunch of people, but for someone like yourself that's gone off grid or even someone that's going camping or taking a trip out into a park,

what are the things that they should think about investing? Or even just things that you've discovered, like, hey, people should just have this regardless of being camping or not.

I think the government thing's good. I think the biggest one which people take for granted is just telling somebody, camping or not. I think the government thing is good. I think the biggest one which people take for granted is like just telling somebody where you're going. I think the biggest thing that kills people in Death Valley National Park is they go off trail. They want to go somewhere. Nobody knows where they're going. Their car breaks down. They have no cell service. They're in the middle of the hottest desert in America. They leave their car to go hike out of the town to try to find some help and they eventually die

so like had they told somebody where they were going maybe they would have been saved and so i was on a hike once where i was as close to not making it as probably i've ever been but i told my buddy that if these circumstances had happened like what to do to like start walking up the wash and that's probably like what got me through that hike and so i think that like telling somebody where you're going you know having a pain in the, if you don't hear me from this, like what are the circumstances after that? So you mentioned before when I was in the mines, these days I tell somebody knows where I'm going in the mines. They know if I'm not out by this time, call this specific person that's on search and rescue. And then that person has the experience

to make a call beyond that. So it kind of gets escalated. And so at these points, there's kind of like a fallback plan when I'm in those types of situations. What kind of permissions do you have to get to do all this stuff up there is it because it's your land it's private landing yeah what's your closest call that you've had besides karen this hike so there's a thing called the saline valley salt tramps they basically made a tramway that goes from saline valley which is in death valley up this it's 14 miles long and the the grade of it is 30 to 40 percent which is an insanely steep grade it's on shale and I decided to walk that I wanted to do a hike and I thought I brought enough water but basically like I slid down this dry waterfall and my water

broke and my little Garmin thing broke because it was on and so I was basically it was 131 in Death Valley that day degrees and so it was just so hot that I got like mini blackouts as far as dehydration things go. But my buddy, I told, if you don't see me at the bottom of this meet-off point, start walking up the mountain basically. So he was able to kind of hike up some Gatorades. So if you didn't have...

I mean, Death Valley kills a lot of people each year due to that dehydration. And due to basically what I was doing, just hiking unknown trails that are too hard at the wrong time of year. Because there's no shade either. I was in these kind of rock canyons where you're just getting roasted for 12 hours straight. What do you think has been the biggest point of growth for you?

What have you learned? What's changed, I guess, about you prior to the ghost town to now? Because it sounds like you've had to develop a ton of interpersonal skills. No capacity for bullshit. Resiliency. There's probably, I mean, a lot of skills you've had to learn up there that we're just, that we don't have to even think about when we're living in the cities. I think that like the biggest one to me, I think about is there's that phrase that everything is figureoutable. And I think that early on, everything was a crisis to me. Like, let's say a door blew off a building. I was like, oh my God, like, what are we possibly, you know?

And then you do a little bit harder task. You do a little bit harder task. And it's almost exercising that muscle of you're going to be able to figure things out. And then you get confidence by you figure out one small thing, you figure out a bigger thing. And these days, our road to get to town has been wiped out by a flood three times. So the first time it happened, I was like, project's done. The road got washed out.

Now I have a back home. I'm like, well, I'll just rebuild the road. And so I think that confidence that comes, like Ryan Holiday describes it as having evidence in yourself. He's like, I don't bank on hope. I bank on evidence. So he says, I can recall in my own life when I've handled problems like this. And so I think I've been thrown into problems that I've been able to handle more. And so that everything is figureoutable is probably the biggest one. That's a great one. You're building your resistance muscle. You wrote a fake book. I did. I did. Called Putting My Foot Down. And you wanted to do it as a literary experiment

to show how easy it was to have a bestseller. Are you applying that to this book? And what was that experiment if someone wants their book to go to bestseller? That was a shot at Amazon more than anybody else because I think bestseller status is something that's very difficult to do with the book world. And I think for the longest time that meant New York Times bestseller list, which is very, very difficult to hit. That's the New York Times pulling independent bookstores from all over the country, getting the reports. And then once a week they put out the bestseller list and there's maybe four lists. And so you're selling tens of thousands of books to appear on that list. And so there's a level of prestige that comes with it

that I think I saw being cashed in where I would see these packages that are like guaranteed bestseller for $4,000. And what they were doing is they're trying to capture people's desire for that status, but without having to do the New York Times list. And so when Amazon came onto the scene, they created their own bestseller lists. And basically, if you top out an Amazon category for an hour instead of a week, they'll give you the number one bestseller. And there's thousands of categories on Amazon. So instead of four different lists that are really hard to hit,

you can pick a very obscure category on Amazon, and you can top it out for an hour and be a number one bestseller. And so I was trying to illustrate that when people were paying these companies all this money, they were kind of getting scammed. And so I mainly wanted to protect some of the authors that I knew I was working with. And so to illustrate that point, I took a photo of my foot because I didn't want anybody to say that the book had merit. That's why it did good. So I wanted no words in it. I uploaded the photo of my foot onto Amazon. I chose Freemasonry Studies as a category because I wanted like a very obscure category.

And then my buddy bought one copy. I bought one copy. So two copies later, it was the number one bestseller in Freemasonry Studies after an hour. So just trying to show that like it on Amazon, the New York Times is still a different, it's very like, it's crazy.

It's very hard. But like Amazon can be a different story. And so I wrote an article about that. I just kind of illustrated it. It got a lot of different attention in the book publishing world. Amazon eventually took down my book. They were like, oh, that's not a book. And so I, I appealed to Jeff Bezos a lot, you know, his, his email is public. It's just Jeff at Amazon. And I heard occasionally that he would answer customer service inquiries if you had like the right thing. And so the article started getting a lot of press. So I kept emailing him over and over and over. And I was like, Jeff,

we're both losing money here. You know, like let's get my book back online. And then Thought Catalog, you know, those guys like thought they were like an old website. So Thought Catalog published all of the articles as a new book that we called, you know, the expanded version of the foot book or whatever. And that got a lot of press. And kind of the point was to illustrate the idea with Amazon. The Toronto Star recreated the thing and they made their book a bestseller that way. But the kind of the fun ending of that is I was at a conference a couple of years later and Jeff Bezos and his brother were speaking at the event. And I remember like sitting across from him at

this lunch table and like kind of being like, i have a bone to pick you know and like he didn't remember at all until like he pretended like he did eventually he's like oh i remember then we took a photo together that was kind of fun he acknowledged putting my foot down he did in his own way you know i think that like maybe he was just like making me feel good about it but uh it was kind of a fun full circle you yeah you i've been thinking about you every day. What is the biggest learning tip that you've learned from Robert and Ryan? With Ryan and Robert, you control the input, not the output. Obviously, going into the book, sometimes you hear authors are like, my goal is to sell a million copies.

That's kind of a horrible goal to begin with. You start with that goal. It's a difficult game from there. But Ryan just, he's like, I'm going to do the best possible book I can do. I'm going to do my best job of launching it. But from there, any marketing is just hoping to kick off word of mouth. You know, that's what makes books sell year over year. Like right now, Robert's book is probably number 15 on Amazon, 15 years later after it came out. And it's not there because Robert's promoting it all the time. It's because a word of mouth

has taken over. And so Robert and Ryan both try to control the input, what they're putting into the book, and then let be once it's out there. And I'm trying my best. I have a book for the first time. It's very hard to accept that mentality. You want to try to control your things and do whatever you can, but that's what I learned from them. Well, I think it's very good advice too, and it's probably freeing in a lot of ways, because I think a lot of people stress over a lot of the stuff that they just really have no control over to begin with. Yeah. And I think a lot of people stress over a lot of the stuff that they just really have no control over. I think what Ryan does better than almost anybody is he never stops talking about

his books or putting out books. I think some people see a book launch and they're like, oh, I got one week to give it my all and then it's done. He's writing articles every week about his books for 10 years. When people are like, oh, wow, Ryan's books do good, he's putting in a lot of work.

The output is incredible. The output is unmatched. We haven't haven't had him on for we got to talk to him again hi ryan yeah if you had to be put back in l.a let's say you had to be put we'll put you right in west hollywood yeah today and you can't go into a mining town and you can't you can't go underground 900 feet. How are you finding peace, solitude, and zen-ness? I would find some mountain around me. There's some in LA. If I'm allowed to go to the mountains or even look at them. No, you're not allowed to go to the mountains. I want to know because I have two kids. I have a husband. I want to know what you would do. I think the point is- Are you going to go lock yourself in the closet? What are you doing?

I said to me, I think sweating. Yeah, I know. Like, oh, yeah, that's the term. Awesome is thrown around a lot. I think everything isn't awesome, but like awe is a powerful experience. And I think you can find awe in different ways.

So for me, I found it in the mountains. I look out and Mount Whitney is 14,500 feet tall. So you're just like, you know, you get that moment where you realize kind of your smallness in it all. That's the most thing is like zoom out and think my problems would be that big a deal. is 14,500 feet tall. So you're just like, you know, you get that moment where you realize kind of your smallness in it all. And that's the most thing is like zoom out and think my problems would be that big a deal. I think if I was in a city, you can find all different things. It doesn't have to be mountains. Like I think a, an orchestra that's beautiful is awesome in its own way. So

finding those sources of awe is probably what I would do. I don't know exactly how I would do it in those circumstances. If I was like a prisoner in a house or something but I would I don't know find some way to experience awe I think that's what I would try I have a tip for you when you do come back yes to maybe LA or Austin get rid of all the lights in your house and just use natural light and red light bulbs red light bulb that's what I would do all your plumbing just get rid of it no I would I think that that'll help the overstimulation. It helps me. I just have red light in my room, so I don't ever

have to feel this light. Don't you feel like now that you've experienced what you've experienced, there's probably a very slim chance of you moving back to a big city? Yeah, I don't think I would spend any significant time in a big city. I really enjoy having the space. I get to play. I could have dirt bikes and all these types of fun things

that I could explore around out there that I just value a lot more than the convenience of a city necessarily. Michael will be there. Michael will be there. Come out. We have dirt bikes. We have razors. It's side by side.

We've had some pretty cool people out. Names of the people that have been out there. So you had Jeff Goldblum out there. That's a unique character. Jeff Goldblum came out to film something. During the pandemic, it was a cool place because it was close enough from LA where people wanted to go to something unique. Cole Sprouse came

out before. He's a big fan of Mudding Towns. G-Eazy came out one time with his girlfriend. A bunch of different people came through to do... A bunch of people in the big YouTube world came out to film different videos. But I think that it's a place where they know that they can find that peace. They know he's bothering them. They can just relax

and rip around on a dirt bike and do whatever they want to do. That was awesome. If we would have known each other earlier and you would have sent me the mining pitch, I would have been best. Dang. All right. For sure. I would have been your guy.

I would have been like, what the hell are we doing? I would have been like, we got a mining talent in the portfolio. Brent, where can everyone find you, your book, your YouTube channel? Tell us all the things. Yeah. Ghost Town Living is the name of the book and it's the YouTube channel. That's probably the best place. The channels, the last four years of living up there, the book is the same with a little bit more depth.

And if they want, I mean, we are open every day 9 to 5. After 5, please don't come up. People can come check out the town whenever they want. Unless you're Karen. Maybe don't rent a Dodge Charger. Yeah, don't come up with a Charger. Brent, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, Brent. Of course. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thank you.